- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Diane Pub Co (Dec 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0756762391
- ISBN-13: 978-0756762391
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14 x 4.1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,911,716 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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First Sentence
A book-lined study, late at night. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
A book-lined study, late at night. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a set piece for the Open Univercity's course on you , your computer and the net, and excellent course for beginners and as such i bought this book expecting it to be of the older style of dry fact filled and boring!! Well it was (for me at least) a memorable and interesting read, I never put it down until it was complete........fascinating to find out how these pioneering people have made such an impact on the public with technology that , like Tv was not envisaged for use as its being used now.....well worth the trip back in time, to the recent past, also mentions the huge impact that britain made with thier code breakers from WWII and the first valve computer ever made in London.....
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book had me gripped. It explains the full history of the net and its inventors, from the men with the vision to those who made it happen.
A little techie in places but this did not stop me picking the book up at every opportunity.
If your interested in the Net and its origins then this is THE book for you.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
The Stories and People of the internet You've Forgotten!
9 Oct 2000
Format:Hardcover
I loved this book because, while semi-technical, it is mostly about events and people that brought us the internet revolution. It took many "small bricks" to build the internet we know today, and hundreds of unsung hero's are revealed. Although I was not intimately involved in this revolution, it has touched my life over and over again, and now, at 70 years, I feel I am a part of it! I especially love the beginning of the authors personal story, which perfectly parallels my life and makes a marvelous connection between short-wave listening, ham radio, and the advent of the internet! The author is very clear in stating where there are "differing stories" about some of the events, which speaks well of his research in preparation for writing the book. This is a book for those that lived through the "beginning" of the future, and for those young people are pushing the future forward in the new millennium!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
I was actually disappointed ...
15 July 2009
Format:Hardcover
I recently bought the book after having read the raving reviews here on Amazon. Before I turn to my critique, it has to be said that Naughton makes a fine effort in bringing together the whole context (or at least some sort of plausible context) of "the internet". There are some not uninteresting bits of information on various side issues such as ham radio.
Anyway, as for the core topic -- the internet -- it turns out the book is little more than a mix of pieces taken very much in sequence from the awesome and much underrated Hafner and Lyon book, some actually very funny manual type of sections on things like how to use a browser to click on hyperlinks, and towards the end a little bit of Raymond and Lessig inspired musings about how much open source is better than proprietary software, and how the internet is threatened by corporate giants.
For a serious researcher this book is almost totally useless as an original source of information. Also, there are some strange asides such as on page 147 "'Real e-mail dates from 1970" with a footnote stating that "For some reason, Hafner and Lyon ... date it as 'one day in 1972', but this must be wrong because the RFC archive shows a flurry of discussions of a mail protocol in the summer and autumn of 1971." This explanation makes no sense to me, for there have been all sorts of dead end RFCs, especially in the very early days. I could elaborate the discussion on what qualifies as the "first email ever" much further, but the crucial point is that Naughton offers very little authoritative information and introduces quite a bit of subjectivity on the sources he builds on.
As an aside, don't even waste your time with the Abbate book, just get the Hafner and Lyon book and get to the original sources of the BBN guys, the NWG, Pouzin, Cerf, and the more recent Dave Clark papers on design principles and the internet.
Anyway, as for the core topic -- the internet -- it turns out the book is little more than a mix of pieces taken very much in sequence from the awesome and much underrated Hafner and Lyon book, some actually very funny manual type of sections on things like how to use a browser to click on hyperlinks, and towards the end a little bit of Raymond and Lessig inspired musings about how much open source is better than proprietary software, and how the internet is threatened by corporate giants.
For a serious researcher this book is almost totally useless as an original source of information. Also, there are some strange asides such as on page 147 "'Real e-mail dates from 1970" with a footnote stating that "For some reason, Hafner and Lyon ... date it as 'one day in 1972', but this must be wrong because the RFC archive shows a flurry of discussions of a mail protocol in the summer and autumn of 1971." This explanation makes no sense to me, for there have been all sorts of dead end RFCs, especially in the very early days. I could elaborate the discussion on what qualifies as the "first email ever" much further, but the crucial point is that Naughton offers very little authoritative information and introduces quite a bit of subjectivity on the sources he builds on.
As an aside, don't even waste your time with the Abbate book, just get the Hafner and Lyon book and get to the original sources of the BBN guys, the NWG, Pouzin, Cerf, and the more recent Dave Clark papers on design principles and the internet.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
A Brief History of the Future
15 Nov 2007
Format:Hardcover
This book is essentially an overview of the development and evolution of the Internet, ending with the browser war between Netscape and Microsoft. It was initially published in the UK in 1999, then in the US in 2000. There is some discussion of the intellectual backstories such as Norbert Wiener's cybernetics and JCR Licklider's ideas on interactive computing, but the book is mainly about the birth and growth of the Net. This book lacks detail - and is in that sense superficial - but it works well as the general overview the author meant it to be.
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