By looking at the history of the Victorian telegraph pioneers and the rival computer networks of the Cold War, host Niall Ferguson tells the story of how a decentralized, not-for-profit worldwide web shape-shifted to become a highly profitable network controlled by a tiny elite selling our attention for billions of dollars to the world’s advertisers. The key lesson is that in the economics of networks, the winner takes all – and once the network is under central control, that winner has the potential to be Big Brother.

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