Scan barcode
A review by gregbrown
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner
A nice-enough book about the birth, life, and successors of ARPANET—really, the origins of computer networking in general.
The authors do a good job of illustrating the varying institutions, personalities, and challenges (both bureaucratic and technological) standing in the way of networking computers together for the first time. It's very much in the pop-history vein, but predates the more recent trend of taking cutesy angles so nothing gets annoying. I get why some readers are upset it didn't dive into the technical issues a little deeper, but this isn't that kind of book!
Biggest downside: the book was written in 1996, and doesn't include much material past the 1970s. Usenet goes unmentioned, and the World Wide Web gets a glancing reference in the epilogue. So much of what we think of as "the internet" didn't come about until the '90s, so writing midstream is going to give you some problems on knowing what to include (Mosaic) and what wouldn't last (gopher).
The authors do a good job of illustrating the varying institutions, personalities, and challenges (both bureaucratic and technological) standing in the way of networking computers together for the first time. It's very much in the pop-history vein, but predates the more recent trend of taking cutesy angles so nothing gets annoying. I get why some readers are upset it didn't dive into the technical issues a little deeper, but this isn't that kind of book!
Biggest downside: the book was written in 1996, and doesn't include much material past the 1970s. Usenet goes unmentioned, and the World Wide Web gets a glancing reference in the epilogue. So much of what we think of as "the internet" didn't come about until the '90s, so writing midstream is going to give you some problems on knowing what to include (Mosaic) and what wouldn't last (gopher).