Who Controls the Past Controls the Future

Tim Wu’s The Master Switch, I must admit, scared me a little bit at first. The daunting hardcover was approximately 366 pages written entirely on a subject that I had very little prior knowledge on. I was intimidated.

However, as I began to read Wu’s work, I found myself enjoying (!) the book. Sure, some of the technical terms took me a little longer to understand, but I found Wu’s claims and the information that he presented to the reader to be extremely captivating. As I read, there was one claim in particular that struck me more than any of the others:

“It shows, as we shall see, that perhaps the most effective way to gain power over the future is to dictate popular assumptions” (Wu 130).

Immediately, I made a connection to George Orwell’s revolutionary work, 1984; “‘Who controls the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’” (Orwell). The wording of the two quotations is almost frightening in their similarities, yet were written more than six decades apart. Could it be that the world that we live in today is, in fact, the world that Orwell was warning us about? 

I pondered this question while continuing to read The Master Switch and found that Wu had presented numerous examples of technological “battles” in which both of the quotations proved to be true. 

One of the examples that Wu provided in his work to support his claim was actually that which I wrote about in my previous blog post. AT&T’s inability to market such innovative technologies as that of “fiber optics, mobile telephones, digital subscriber lines, facsimile machines, speakerphones” dictated popular assumptions in a different way than one would originally think (Wu 107). By not releasing such technology, Bell Labs was dictating popular assumptions. Withholding information, essentially, has the same effect as providing information and changes the way that people view the world around them. Because AT&T repressed such vital technology, they had the power to introduce and market the inventions to society whenever they believed that the world was “ready” for them. 

For me personally, Wu’s most compelling example was his description of the “battle” between television and FM radio, which occurred during the 1930’s and 1940’s. The notorious David Sarnoff, president of the Radio Company of America at the time, was “the single most powerful man in American broadcasting, the defining mogul of an information industry” (125). Sarnoff was the sort of man who would do anything to protect the RCA, particularly his beloved AM radio. 

When his colleague, Professor Edwin Armstrong of Columbia University, approached him with the revolutionary FM radio, which improved the sound quality of radio immensely, Sarnoff had him end all testing on the FM radio and leave. This action was taken in order to prolong the popularity of AM radio and hinder the acceptance of the better quality FM radio

How did Sarnoff and the RCA accomplish this? By dictating popular assumptions and “focusing on the promise of a new medium: television” (130). 

David Sarnoff

During this time, there were only so many ways that society could learn about new innovations and technologies, the most influential of which was through the few monopolistic corporations that provided the products. Wu writes, “[t]he technology of FM was rarely mentioned in the radio industry’s endless promotion of the latest and greatest. When mentioned at all, FM, lauded as theoretically interesting, was also minimized as a mostly unproved technology, experimental and of marginal utility” (130). As a result of the RCA downplaying FM radio’s value, “[m]any standard histories in fact ascribe the slow development of FM to the rise of television” (131). In fact, it would not be until the 1970’s and 1980‘s that FM’s usefulness would come to the attention of the general public and exceed AM radio in popularity. Also, unfortunately, Sarnoff and the RCA’s hinderance of the FM radio, among other events, drove its inventor, Professor Armstrong, to commit suicide in 1954.

While there are multiple examples that Wu provides in The Master Switch to support his claim, this is not to say that it applies to all aspects of technology in society. The entertainment industry, for example, is one which is extremely unpredictable no matter how studios attempt to dictate popular assumptions. The popularity of a certain entertainment products - be it movies, books or television shows - depend on the people in society. The entertainment industry is focused around “selling something people don’t ultimately need; they have to want it. They have to be inclined to invest time and money...without certainty of satisfaction or desired effect” (221). In this particular industry, the future of a certain studio or publisher has little to do with what the people want today, as their tastes and wants could change overnight, and often do. 

Wu’s claims throughout The Master Switch were all captivating, but this one claim in particular struck me. I suppose that I had never really thought about who dictates what society thinks, believes and wants until I began reading Wu’s work and looking through the lens of this claim. As he writes in his introduction, “just as you are what you eat, how and what you think depends on what information you are exposed to” (13). And although I was originally quite frightened of Wu and his work, everything in The Master Switch actually makes sense (I must admit, I may have been the most surprised about that) and can be applied to my daily life. 

So, in response to my question from the beginning of this post, I would have to say no, we have not entered the world that Orwell was warning society about. I do, however, think that we could quite possibly be on our way there.