- Hardcover
- Publisher: Tandem Library (Jan 2000)
- ISBN-10: 0613921631
- ISBN-13: 978-0613921633
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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First Sentence
The World Wide Web is like an encyclopaedia, a telephone directory, a record collection, a video shop, and Speakers' Corner all rolled into one and accessible through any computer. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The World Wide Web is like an encyclopaedia, a telephone directory, a record collection, a video shop, and Speakers' Corner all rolled into one and accessible through any computer. 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
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The World Wide Web has seen an explosive period of growth over the past decade and its presence has become ever more pervasive and all embracing. While literally millions have now been exposed to the web (either through daily domestic or business usage - or simply through coverage of the dot com "boom and bust" economy in the traditional media), relatively few seem to know much about how it all came in to being. In this fascinating book, James Gillies (a science writer based at CERN - the European physics laboratory where the web was first developed) and Robert Cailliau (one of this exciting new medium's first proponents) describe in detail how it all came about - and how the vision of the web's original developer Tim Berners-Lee became reality in the shape of the fastest growing communications medium - possibly of all time.
Beginning with the development of the underlying communications infrastructure, the authors describe how what we now know as the Internet evolved from being a nuclear "bombproof" US military network in the late 1960s to becoming the "mother of all networks" so beloved of the academic research communities in the 1970s and 1980s. With these foundations thus laid, the book goes on to describe how the seemingly ambitiously named "World Wide Web" was built on top of the existing Internet in the early 1990s, and just how quickly the medium has since gained acceptance and widespread usage throughout the civilised world.
Probably the most significant achievement of "How the Web was Born" is the technical history is covered in a rigorous but yet lively fashion, with lots of human interest being included to give a background to the various different academic, military and commercial interests which led to the practical development of innovative new ideas in both computer hardware and software, as well as in telecommunications technology and the man - machine interface. As such, "How the Web was Born" has much to offer the casual reader, while not disappointing the more technically minded savant: In all, the authors have provided a most excellent and enjoyable read, whilst still maintaining an authority and attention to technical detail which could make this book a definitive history of the subject in years to come.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
How the Web (not the Internet) was born
16 Feb 2008
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
HTWWB is a detailed look at what brought us to where the Web was at the end of the last century. There is a good (although not as good as Where Wizards Stay Up Late) description of how the Internet itself came to be, and then it goes into the whole set of precursors to what Tim Berners-Lee invented at CERN, which became the Web.
The book is notable for really digging back into the precursors of the Web. I've been in networking since 1979 and there were a lot of new things for me to learn in the book.
The book is weak where it over invests in the politics at CERN and especially around the horse-trading that resulted in the consortia that manages the Web, W3C. The last fifty pages of what been an engrossing read just drag and drag.
I'd give the first two thirds of the book at least four stars, the last third two at best. Still, if you're really interested in how things like URL, HTTP, HTML, DNS, etc came about, this is worth making the effort.
The book is notable for really digging back into the precursors of the Web. I've been in networking since 1979 and there were a lot of new things for me to learn in the book.
The book is weak where it over invests in the politics at CERN and especially around the horse-trading that resulted in the consortia that manages the Web, W3C. The last fifty pages of what been an engrossing read just drag and drag.
I'd give the first two thirds of the book at least four stars, the last third two at best. Still, if you're really interested in how things like URL, HTTP, HTML, DNS, etc came about, this is worth making the effort.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Once upon a time in the web!
13 Feb 2006
Format:Paperback
The Physician Gillies and computation scientific Cailliau gives us an impressive recount, without technical lexicon, about how the actual Web spouted since a Physics lab in Geneva environs.
All the implications generated by this colossal invention, including the whole change of paradigms and profound transformations in our quotidian lives are described with notable erudition and precision.
Once you have started it will be too hard to leave this passionate reading.
All the implications generated by this colossal invention, including the whole change of paradigms and profound transformations in our quotidian lives are described with notable erudition and precision.
Once you have started it will be too hard to leave this passionate reading.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Gripping, Rivetting and Spellbinding
6 Feb 2001
Format:Paperback
OK, so I'm used to reviewing books of a more technical nature ;)
This account of the beginning of the web is both entertaining and informative. I highly recommend it to anybody whose introduction to computer science has been the web: this book will fill in a lot of the gaps about the origins of all sorts of topics ,such as hypertext and networking.
I find it interesting that the authors did not always take a linear approach to their subject. Several chapters concentrated on a particular sub-topic, bringing it forward from its root in the fifties or sixties or even earlier, all the way through the nineties.
Then the next chapter would likewise deal with a different but related sub-topic. I found this non-linear approach to be much like the World Wide Web itself. Considering one of the authors was intimately involved with the birth of the Web, I wouldn't be surprised if the book were intended to flow this way....it makes it so that you could conceivably jump around from chapter, just like jumping from hyperlink to hyperlink....
This book might also make good reading for people who are close to web geeks, but aren't geeks themselves. As long as they are intelligent enough to understand computing concepts, it will help explain to them what this fascination of ours is all about. Hey, it may even get THEM interested ;)
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