One on One: Tim Wu, Author of The Master Switch - NYTimes.com
Talk a little bit about your discussion of AT&T in the book.
In the 1910s, AT&T promised the American public that they would do no evil. Their president, Theodore Vail, turned to the government and the American public and he said we are a public utility and our duty is to the American people before profit. In there was the grand bargain that we keep making between the great information monopolists and the American nation. AT&T was the 1910 counterpart to Google’s pledge to do no evil.
When did AT&T become “evil”?
Most monopolists create a golden age that lasts a decade or more, and then slowly they became more interested in being in power. AT&T became dangerous when they began to suppress technologies that might threaten their rule.
Which technologies did AT&T suppress?
In the book I tell the story of tape recording technology, which AT&T itself invented in the late 1920s, and then suppressed because they believed that the recording technology would lead to the abandonment of the telephone.
