Hafner, K. and Lyon, M. (1998) Where Wizards Stay Up Late – The Origins of the Internet, Simon and Schuster, Touchstone
Twenty five years ago, it didn’t exist. Today, twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net. “Where Wizards Stay Up Late” is the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone. In the 1960’s, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT saw them as the ultimate communications devices. With Defense Department funds, he and a band of visionary computer whizzes began work on a nationwide, interlocking network of computers. Taking readers behind the scenes, “Where Wizards Stay Up Late” captures the hard work, genius, and happy accidents of their daring, stunningly successful venture.
Naughton, J. (1999) A Brief History of the Future – The Origins of the Internet, Phoenix, Weidenfeld and Nicolson
The only book that tells the whole story of the internet from its origins in the 1940s to the advent of the worldwide web at the dawn of the 21st century
The Internet is the most remarkable thing human beings have built since the Pyramids. John Naughton¿s book intersperses wonderful personal stories with an authoritative account of where the Net actually came from, who invented it and why, and where it might be taking us. Most of us have no idea of how the Internet works or who created it. Even fewer have any idea of what it means for society and the future. In a cynical age, John Naughton has not lost his capacity for wonder. He examines the nature of his own enthusiasm for technology and traces its roots in his lonely childhood and in his relationship with his father. A Brief History of the Future is an intensely personal celebration of vision and altruism, ingenuity and determination and above all, of the power of ideas, passionately felt, to change the world.
Cringely, R. X. (1996) Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition and Still Can’t Get a Date, Second Edition, Penguin Books Ltd
This work looks at the business of computing in the US, as computer science, as a business, and as a collection of extraordinary and eccentric characters. After automobiles, energy production, and illegal drugs, personal computers are one of the largest manufacturing industries in the world, and one of the great success stories for American business. This book is linked to a Channel 4 television series entitled “The Triumph of the Nerds”.
Table of Contents
The demo-god; the tyranny of the normal distribution; why they don’t call it computer valley; amateur hour; role models; Chairman Bill leads the happy workers in song; all IBM stories are true; software envy; clones; the prophet; font wars; on the beach; economics of scale; counter-reformation; future computing; wait, there’s more!; do the wave.