Reading Questions
Order Description
Answer the questions from the document attached about the book (Master Switch- The rise and fall of information empires by Tim Wu, 2011 )
Chapter 9 – FM Radio
67. Who is Edwin Armstrong?
68. How do AM & FM work?
69. How did Sarnoff build his radio empire?
70. How was FM radio the quintessential disruptive innovation?
71. Compare AM & FM radio characteristics.
72. What is simulcasting? Give an example.
73. Who was getting new radio licenses in the late 1940s?
Chapter 10 – We Now Add Sight to Sound
74. Who was Philo Farnsworth?
75. How did Sarnoff deal with television?
76. What are early adopters?
77. What is permissionless innovation? Give an example.
78. What is a vaporware strategy?
79. How was electronic television different than telephone, radio, the Internet and other innovations?
Part III – The Rebels, The Challengers and the Fall
Chapter 11 – The Right Kind of Breakup
80. Why do some people criticize government mandated breakups of large companies like AT&T?
81. What was the result of the breakup of Paramount?
82. What is the Sherman Act?
83. In what ways was it alleged the movie studios violated the Sherman Act?
84. What, in addition to the lawsuits against the studios, hurt them economically?
85. What is the MPAA?
86. What is the primary purpose of antistrust laws?
Chapter 12 – The Radicalism of the Internet Revolution
87. What is ARPA? Why was it important to mass communication?
88. What was the goal of creating the Internet?
89. What are interfaces?
90. How did Baran plan to change the telephone infrastructure? Why?
91. What is packet networking?
Chapter 13 – Nixon’s Cable
92. What did cable TV look like in the 1960s? What were its limitations?
93. What was CATV?
94. Why were cable operators and broadcasters foes?
95. How did broadcasters frame the “encroachment” of cable?
96. What was the case Fortnightly v. United Artists? Why is it important?
97. As cable was developing, how did the FCC view its mandate?
98. What was the effect on cable of the FCC’s 1966 order?
99. What was Fred Friendly’s role in the development of cable television?
100. What did he view as being the major issue with broadcasting?
101. How does concentrated media power limit the public’s access to diverse views?
102. How did Friendly and Smith envision the relationship between cable and politics?
103. What is common carriage? What are the obligations of common carriers?
104. How did the Nixon administration advance cable?
Chapter 14 – Broken Bell
105. What was the first step in undoing the Bell monopoly?
106. What three pools of competition did the FCC create to compete with AT&T?
107. How did MCI compete with AT&T?
108. How did the RJ-45 phone jack encourage competition?
109. Why wasn’t AT&T allowed to engage in data processing services?
110. How did AT&T go after MCI?
111. What was the outcome of the Bell breakup?
112. Did the Bell breakup immediately result in competitive benefits to consumers?
Chapter 15 – Esperanto for Machines
113. Who was Zamenhof and what is Esperanto?
114. What is TCP/IP?
115. What was ARPANET?
116. How does encapsulation work?
117. What is the importance of Transmission Control Protocol?
118. Compare the economic notions critical of central planning with the Internet’s End-to-End approach.
Part IV: Reborn
Without a Soul
119: Why is size key in the entertainment industries?
120: What are the temptations associated with monopoly status? How has that changed
over time?
Chapter 16: Turner Does Television
121: When and how did cable emerge as an industry?
122: How did cable alter the media environment?
123: How did Ted Turner become the pioneer of cable? Why?
124: In what way did Turner’s personality drive the development of cable?
125: How did broadcast attempt to defense itself from cable?
126: How did networks get around AT&T’s rates?
127: What was the only national network to enter the market between 1930 and 1970?
128: How did Turner’s cable get around AT&T’s issues?
129: What is a superstation?
130: How was pay TV different than cable? Why did it seem less threatening?
131: How did Turner intend to keep the cost of his cable network in check?
132: What was Turner’s second network on cable?
133: How did cable develop in terms of the stages of media development?
134: What is volksgemeinschaft?
135: What are information cocoons? Why are they bad?
136: What was the state of the media when cable entered the scene?
137: What are the benefits of a centralized mass media?
138: What is niche marketing?
139: How were the funding models of cable and the Internet different?
Chapter 17: Mass Production of the Spirit
140:When was the second open era of film-making?
141: What led to the sale of United Artists to MGM?
142: What is a media conglomerate?
143: What is the reasoning behind forming a media conglomerate?
144: What is a hit-driven industry? Why is it bad?
145: What countermeasures to failure have evolved in the entertainment industry?
146: Who was Steven Ross? What was his impact on the industry?
147: Why did the studios integrate vertically in the 1920s?
148: How did Ross deal with the volatility in the entertainment industry?
149: What initially resulted from the stability that conglomerates provided?
150: What is empire-building? Give an example.
151: How did conglomerates further empire-building? Give an example.
152: What role did stars and sequels play in financial stability?
153: Explain the role of intellectual property in the entertainment industry.
154: How is information different from nearly every other commodity?
155: What is a signifier?
156: What did the media ownership model look like in 1990 compared to the early parts of
the 20th Century?
157: What was the regulatory approach of the 1980s and 1990s?
158: What kind of films have resulted from the current approach?
Chapter 18: The Return of AT&T
159: How did the government respond to 9/11 with regard to communication?
160: What were some of the characteristics of the Telecomm Act of 1996?
161: What is FISA?
162: How does the reliance on telecommunication make the government’s job easier?
163: What is intermodality?
Part V: The Internet Against Everyone
164: One was the one exception to the domination of big business in at the end of the first
decade of the 21st Century?
Chapter 19: A Surprising Wreck
165: What was one of the first major examples of product placement in movies?
166: What is net neutrality?
167: Why did Time Warner view AOL as a strategic business partner?
168: What is total merchandising?
169: What is broadband? Why was it detrimental to AOL?
170: What are the three periods of Internet development?
171: Why did AOL/TimeWarner fail?