Throughout Tim Wu’s, The Master Switch, he presents the different technologies that have greatly impacted our society and the stories behind how each came to be known. In some of these stories we have seen greedy and control hungry people looking to create or discover the next big technology in the information industry. However Tim Wu states, “the motivations of information moguls can almost never be exhaustively described in terms of simple greed and vanity” (315). He makes a valid claim that “the men and women that run the information empires of today and tomorrow will inevitably have enormous power over the extent of our free expression” (315).
There are several ways in which Wu proves this to be true. For example, when the television was first invented the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) suppressed it by banning its use. Eleven years later, David Sarnoff re-invented the television and it became a technology that “shaped American popular culture and social norms in the twentieth century, to the point of virtually creating them” (139). This further proves Wu’s point that information moguls, such as Sarnoff, come to have great power because of their inventions. It is doubtful that many people knew that it was not a fully original idea of David Sarnoff. He received all of the credit for the invention of the television because he waited to re-create it at a time that would give him a maximum amount of recognition and power. Although it seems that Sarnoff’s motives were purely based on greed and the desire to be recognized as the inventor of the next, big thing, where would we be without it? Today, people use televisions to watch the news, see how the stock market is doing, for entertainment purposes as well as educational means. If Sarnoff had not re-created the television how much longer would the FCC’s ban lasted?
In another example that Wu presents, Daniel Drawbaugh had come up with the invention of the telephone but had not done much with his findings. Seven years later, Bell invented the telephone. It did not matter that Drawbaugh had first invented it because he had not done anything to establish it nor to present it to the public. Bell, however, formed alliances with Gardiner Hubbard, his primary investor, who came to support the idea of the telephone as an invention that could replace the telegraph. The motives in this situation had changed from improving the telegraph, to making something better than the telegraph. It did not matter who came up with the invention of the telephone first, all that mattered was who made it the next big thing, and Bell did just that.
Another technological advance that Wu discusses is the answering machine. AT&T restrained the release of the answering machine due to a selfish fear that it would result in people abandoning the use of the telephone. They suppressed Clarence Hickman’s discoveries in 1934 as well as any further research on the magnetic storage, which included the magnetic recording tape necessary to create the answering machine. It was not until sixty years later that a historian named Mark Clark came across Hickman’s research. Although it seems that AT&T was being selfish they believed that it was “safer to shut down a thrilling line of research than to risk the Bell system” (106). They were trying to protect their company when in reality they were being paranoid and stifling a technology that is a commercially valuable discovery. Where would we be today without the answering machine? What if AT&T had completely covered all tracks of research? How much longer would it have taken for someone else to invent it in the United States?
Today, we use technology so much that it is difficult to imagine what life would be like without it. It is unfortunate that people battle over who will come out with the next big thing, but if they didn’t would we have been as quick to come out with all of the technology that we have today? The competitive aspect is one thing that motivates people to work harder, and may be a huge factor in these situations that Wu presents. This competition is often fueled by a desire for power and recognition, but there is something else to it. The person who originally creates a device may have extreme creativity, but perhaps not the ingenuity and/or a sense of industry to market their invention. Therefore, the person who took the next step gets credit for bringing the invention to the public. The person who who draws the public's attention to the invention will get the fame and credit for the invention but it is due to the fact that they took the time and initiative to earn most of the credit, and the fact that their invention became available to others has helped to advance our society, so they deserve credit.
The people who are driven to invent the new popular technologies are most likely going to succeed and gain an influential power over our free expression just as Wu claims, but it is because they not only invented it but they were also skilled in how to market the invention. While it is up to each individual to decide if the people were right or wrong in taking credit for an invention, the fact is someone invented them and without these technologies, where would we be today? These technologies have a true and lasting impact on our culture and society and their inventors are responsible for it, thus they have made a mark in society that has greatly contributed to, as Wu says, “the extent of our free expression” (315).
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