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A review by kmherkes
From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: What You Really Need to Know About the Internet by John Naughton
4.0
Preface: I am on a never-ending quest to keep my brain from turning to mush under the weight of the pop culture I bury it in. I attempt one non-fiction book a month in an effort to Always Be Learning. I do always learn. Sometimes it's a slog. Sometimes it's fun.
On my food-based analogy review scale, this book gets a solid "Potluck dinner with friends on a summer evening. With beers." It offers lots of different dishes from different origins, some of which don't go well with others, but the atmosphere is friendly and non-judgmental. There are laughs as well as serious moments, and best of all, you'll find yourself trying hard to remember all the insightful comments that were made during the long evening.
The premise --How the Internet Is Changing Everything-- could've been a drag, or pretentious, but John Naughton does a great job discussing prior disruptive technological innovations and drawing useful comparisons between them and the Internet. He also acknowledges that we won't really understand the changes happening now for decades or even centuries to come.
The writing style was chatty and refreshing, and he backed up his speculation with ample historical and sociological data. I never felt he was talking down to me, but he never tried to impress me with Academic Verbiage either. This is the kind of writing I was hoping to find in Gladwell's David & Goliath. Too bad it wasn't there.
I always check for an index and a solid bibliography, since I am inclined towards binge research, and this has a great examples of both.
I recommend this to anyone who makes a living in or around the tech world, to anyone who likes history, and anyone who likes pondering how our inventions change our lives.
On my food-based analogy review scale, this book gets a solid "Potluck dinner with friends on a summer evening. With beers." It offers lots of different dishes from different origins, some of which don't go well with others, but the atmosphere is friendly and non-judgmental. There are laughs as well as serious moments, and best of all, you'll find yourself trying hard to remember all the insightful comments that were made during the long evening.
The premise --How the Internet Is Changing Everything-- could've been a drag, or pretentious, but John Naughton does a great job discussing prior disruptive technological innovations and drawing useful comparisons between them and the Internet. He also acknowledges that we won't really understand the changes happening now for decades or even centuries to come.
The writing style was chatty and refreshing, and he backed up his speculation with ample historical and sociological data. I never felt he was talking down to me, but he never tried to impress me with Academic Verbiage either. This is the kind of writing I was hoping to find in Gladwell's David & Goliath. Too bad it wasn't there.
I always check for an index and a solid bibliography, since I am inclined towards binge research, and this has a great examples of both.
I recommend this to anyone who makes a living in or around the tech world, to anyone who likes history, and anyone who likes pondering how our inventions change our lives.