William S. Paley

Want an understanding of technology and innovation in the twentieth century? Then read the autobiography William Paley, founder and chairman of CBS, As It Happened: A Memoir. Bill Paley learned the art of business from his father who owned a cigar factory. Still a young man in his twenties, Paley took some of his business windfall and invested the money into radio creating CBS Studios. This is a fascinating history of innovation in America--radio to television to music are all covered from the twenties up to through the seventies. Paley was inventing the business as he went along--and he writes of making quick and early mistakes.

This is a good book to read after Tim Wu's Master of the Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. While Wu's book covers the entire industries and wave and changes of innovation in control, it is then interesting to get Paley's perspective from heading one of the most powerful information empires. You really see through this book how much control Paley did have over media--luckily as he describes in the book he had ideas about fairness and neutrality. Although there are a few times in the book I cringed a bit to realize how much control he had.

During his lifetime a few things that Paley accomplished:
*rise of radio
*rise of television (and he tried to get color tv from the beginning)
*television--mass medium or educational content? and how do you mix both
*WWII--went to Europe and helped `
*major collector of art--picassos, matisse, etc.
*Columbia Records and record club
… (plus d'informations)