HEARSAY CULTURE RADIO
Dave chats with Tim Wu about the Internet’s monopolies and their control over the flow of information.
In the early 2000’s Tim Wu Tim Wu coined the term “net neutrality”—the idea that Internet service providers, like Comcast or Verizon, should treat all content on the Internet equally—and arguably started the first war about the Internet. It was a war over who controls the physical wire (or hardware).
In this episode of Hearsay Culture, Dave talks with Tim about that first big battle for the future of the Internet, which was just beginning to rage at the time of the interview. Could the entire open flow of information through the Internet be controlled by corporate monopolies that possessed the “master switch”? In an interview that anticipates the misinformation and confusion that is now pervasive on the Internet, Hearsay Culture was on the leading edge of this issue over a decade ago, offering a way to understand where we are now.
“This network [the Internet] was by design a network that linked other people.” – Tim Wu
“At stake is not the First Amendment or the right of free speech, but exclusive custody of the master switch.” – Fred Friendly, former President of CBS News
*Recording note: This interview was recorded using older engineering equipment which we’ve since updated and improved for all future programming.
