Tim Wu Archives - Don Kasprzak

The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu. He holds an undergrad in biophysics from McGill University and a JD from Harvard Law School. He served as Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy. Today he teaches at Columbia Law School.

So, do you know how Madison avenue hijacked the web? Ever consider a time when you searched online for a product, a lawn mower for example. And before you realize that it was only minutes before your facebook feed started popping lawn mower ads into your feed?

Perhaps a Youtube channel is promoting a certain lawn mower vendor is a link pushed into your social media accounts? How many times have you noticed an online brand working into your internet life? In fact, have you even noticed that family, coworkers and friends are also falling victim to the attention merchants? Look deeper with your social media links to and from family and friends.

Tim is revealing for some the very idea that your internet life is under assault. He believes that American business actually depends on how much attention you pay to their messages. From advertising, branding, and even sponsored social media profiles.

Their focus is to gain your attention and put your eyes and mouse clicks on their internet sites. All to sell you that lawn mower.

Tim Wu’s second book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires is wonderful examination how American information empires were established and stifled innovation at the same time. This is my second book by Wu following his brilliant Who Controls the Internet.
Wu identifies long business cycles surrounding the birth of information systems. While they begin open over time they were consolidated and driven by the market to become closed.

We displays how they become open again following amazing innovations force a business change in order to survive in the new marketplace.

The Master Switch opens with the birth of the Bell AT&T telephone monopoly. This is a facinating story when held against the garage startups of Apple and Google.

There is an amazing look at how countries and cultures also view information empires differently. The case for Wu is the capitalist, independent market approach to radio vs the UK’s BBC dominated by the royal family.

The Master Switch reveals how four key markets actually hold government infrastructure: telecommunications, banking, energy and transportation. These four and their capitalist owners for generations established control over any citizen’s attempt at challenging their monopolies. The lesson Wu establishes is corporate control by closed technologies. Yet one cannot help but understand they magically protected the country from the devastating affects of revolution leading up to and more importantly the horrific aftermath of World War I that forever removed Paris as the hub for film entertainment.