We are in the midst of a communications revolution -- a no-holds-barred free-for-all, in which several major players and a group of new media upstarts are vying for the power to transform our lives. It is a contest being waged at high speed, with great rancor, new rules, and incomprehensibly rich profits. Who will win this struggle for supremacy?Microsoft, Bell Atlantic, Hughes Electronics, Time Warner, and TCI are all marshaling vast amounts of capital and new technology in a bid to outguess the competition on the direction of the new marketplace. Even the government is struggling for a place in the new digital universe. But Free-for-All shows that a political influence on the speed and direction of change is unlikely.