Where Wizards Stay up Late
by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon
Buy on AmazonA little more than twenty-five years ago, computer networks did not exist anywhere - except in the minds of a handful of computer scientists. In the late 1960s, the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency funded a project to create computer communication among its university-based researchers. The experiment was inspired by J. C. R. Licklider, a brilliant scientist from MIT. At a time when computers were generally regarded as nothing more than giant calculators, Licklider saw their potential as communications devices. Where Wizards Stay Up Late is the story of the small group of researchers and engineers whose invention, daring in its day, became the foundation for the Internet.…
Recommended by
"If you want to go all the way back, Janet Abbate’s Inventing The Internet really takes it all the way back to the Eisenhower administration and the very beginnings of electronic computers. It all gets pretty dark. But I would characterise the difference more as Abbate being more technically fluent and Hafner more interested in the human story of the personalities that gave rise to the Internet. Abbate really pursues it all the way back, and Hafner picks it up more in the 60s. Both of them emphasise what a mixed bag the Internet was; this bizarre collaboration between the military, academia and telecommunication industries produced something that we perceive as a natural resource almost, but which, in fact, was cobbled together in a very happenstance way, and there are a lot of accidents that contributed to the way it’s set up right now."
World Wide Web · fivebooks.com
Patrick Collison's Bookshelf · patrickcollison.com