Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution—and Why America Might Miss It

Susan Crawford

Jan 2019 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Coleen Marlo

About this audiobook

The world of fiber optic connections reaching neighborhoods, homes, and businesses will be as different from what came before as the world after the advent of electricity. The virtually unlimited amounts of data we'll be able to send and receive through fiber-optic connections will enable a degree of virtual presence that will radically transform health care, education, urban administration and services, agriculture, retail sales, and offices. Yet all of those transformations will pale in comparison to the innovations and new industries that we can't imagine today. In a fascinating account combining policy expertise with compelling on-the-ground reporting, Susan Crawford reveals how the giant corporations that control cable and internet access in the United States use their tremendous lobbying power to tilt the playing field against competition, holding back the infrastructure improvements necessary for the country to move forward. And she shows how cities and towns are fighting monopoly power to bring the next technological revolution to their communities.

About the author

Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She is the author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution and Why America Might Miss It, and Charleston: Race, Water, and the Coming Storm.

AudioFile Earphones Award winner Coleen Marlo has earned numerous Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards and won an Audie Award for her narration of Snakewoman of Little Egypt by Robert Hellenga.