Ruling the Waves: From the Compass to the Internet, a History of Business and Politics along the Technological Frontier

Beginning with the development of the compass, Ruling the Waves examines a series of technological revolutions that promised, in their time, to transform the world's politics and business. With Debora Spar's gifted storytelling, each chapter reads like an adventure tale as she recounts the histories of the printing press and maps; of the telegraph, radio, and satellite television; of software, encryption, and the advent of digital music. At each of these junctures Spar suggests that invention led to both a wave of commerce and of chaos.
Entrepreneurs such as Samuel Morse and Rupert Murdoch carved new markets from the emerging technology and proclaimed that the old rules no longer applied. And for a while, they were right. But eventually--and inevitably--even cowboys need rules: rules of property, rules of coordination, rules of competition. The erstwhile pioneers thus turn to government, lobbying for order and setting the stage for the next wave of discovery.
A fascinating history of business, Ruling the Waves is also an original, thought-provoking analysis of the parallels between past innovations and inventions and our own tumultuous times.

Debora L. Spar is the Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor and Senior Associate Dean at the Harvard Business School. She served previously as president of Barnard College and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and is the author of numerous books exploring the ways in which technology reshapes business, society, and even our most intimate lives. She and her husband are the parents of three grown children.