It was hard not to fear the worst when President Barack Obama appointed Tom Wheeler as chair of the Federal Communications Commission in 2013. Wheeler was the CEO of the wireless industry group CTIA from 1992 to 2004, and the CEO of the National Cable Television Association from 1979 to 1984. As the agency drafted its net neutrality rules, comedian John Oliver famously compared putting Wheeler in charge of the FCC to hiring a dingo to babysit your kids.

But Wheeler wasn't a dingo. On his watch, the FCC passed the Open Internet Order that established net neutrality and reclassified broadband internet providers as "common carriers" similar to landline and cellular phone providers. Maybe that shouldn't have been so surprising. Wheeler had spent time during the 1980s as CEO of a tech startup called NABU, which offered an AOL-like home computer networking service that used cable television lines. That experience helped him understand the importance of open networks, he explained in a WIRED op-ed in 2015.

But his views weren't shaped by experience alone. Wheeler’s term as FCC chair interrupted his work on a book on the history of network technology and how those networks help and hinder innovation. Wheeler wasn't able to finish the book until after he left the FCC in 2017. From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future finally arrived this month. WIRED spoke with Wheeler about his work and what the history of information technologies tells us about how to regulate today's information giants like AT&T, Comcast, Google, and Facebook.

WIRED: You write about three eras of information networks: the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, then the emergence of railroad and telegraph networks in the industrial era, and finally the rise of the modern digital information era. What sets our era apart from the previous eras?

Tom Wheeler: I started writing the book before I became chairman of the FCC and had to put it aside while I was chairman. If it had been published before it would have been all about the power of distributed networks. Now it's about how networks have led to non-physical centralization of economic activity.

Traditionally networks have always been a centralizing force. The hub of the network used to be where the rail lines went together or where the phone calls were switched. The railroad went to a point where the boxcars were switched to another line; at that point economic activity developed. The telephone went to a central switch that then transferred it to another line and economic activity gathered around that central switching point. Now the hub of the network has been moved out so the ultimate hub is the individual, and the individual is making a choice to access information which itself is non-physically centralized. It used to be the physical network that was centralizing, now it's something that rides the physical network that is centralizing.

Amazon has 500 private label products. Did you know that? 500 private label products. They watch everything that is selling. They say "Well, hey, all these batteries are selling, I'm going to have an Amazon battery and that's the one that I'm going to promote." All of that traces back to their control of information that they were able to use.

Data is the new capital asset of the 21st century. Amazon has more of the decisive capital assets than Walmart does. The asset is not what you have on your shelves. The asset is not the stores and the parking lots that you have. The asset is the information you have about your customers that allows you to target them for content and allows you then to develop content that you know will be attractive to them, whether it's [the Amazon Prime video series] Bosch or batteries.