Nerds 2.0.1 - Hardcover

Segaller, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1575001063 ISBN 13: 9781575001067

Publisher: TV Books, 1998

Synopsis

A companion book to the PBS television series chronicles the thirty-year development of the Internet from its beginnings as a cold war effort to build a network of government computers in order to save money

About this title

Review

Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet presents the development of the Web as a product of colliding, dualistic forces: the individuality of the personal computer and the universality of a global network. Along the way, other complementary opposites arise, such as the intersection of the "computer lib" hippie hacker and the IBM or Pentagon bureaucrat. The biographies of these visionaries, and the magnificent changes their ideas induced, make Nerds 2.0.1 compelling reading.

Nerds 2.0.1 is a unique computer-history book, in that it is really a history of networking. Author Stephen Segaller covers all the current heavy hitters of the technology industry in depth: Novell, 3Com, and Cisco. In particular, the story of the creation of Cisco--and the ousting of the original founders by the sponsoring venture capitalist--shows the high-level stakes and intrigue this billionaire world holds. Segaller also chronicles the failures of companies who didn't realize what their programmers had made available to them. IBM, Xerox, and, some would say, Microsoft are big players in this part of Segaller's tale.

The author puts technological developments in a helpful context: the infamous 100-hour Silicon Valley workweek, the "dog-year" life span of an Internet start-up, and the managerial shufflings of a sponsoring venture capitalist firm all make sense in the world he describes. --Jennifer Buckendorff

From the Back Cover

Millions turned to the Internet to access the Starr Report. Now Nerds 2.0.1, the first detailed history of computer networking, tells the dramatic story of how we have come to be wired together by the Internet and the World Wide Web.

The narrative begins with the launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite and the efforts of one Pentagon bureaucrat, Bob Taylor, to save money. By building a network of computers, he believed the government could avoid buying so many new ones for academic research. From these modest Cold War beginnings in the 1960s a global networking industry has flourished, creating virtual communities, online shopping, ubiquitous e-mail, and immense fortunes.

Stephen Segaller's timely book draws on detailed interviews with more than seventy of the pioneers who have used their technological genius and business skills to make incompatible systems work together, to make networking user-friendly, and to create a new global communications medium that rivals the telephone system or television in its scope and reach.

The overnight sensation of the Internet really has taken almost thirty years to arrive. Nerds 2.0.1 brings us the often comical history of networking technology and the personal stories of those who made it all happen from the Pentagon to the first academic network; from the researcher who Rlived in the future at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center to the hackers who jumpstarted the personal computer industry at the Homebrew Computer Club; from the entrepreneur who made a fortune with the motto "Steal My Software" to the hippies who created a virtual community for Grateful Deadheads; from the university campus basement that spawned the Mosaic Web-browser to the European nuclear research lab where the World Wide Web was invented; and from the late start of the sleeping giant, Microsoft, belatedly recognizing the Internet tidal wave, to the burrito-eating twentysomething founders of the hugely successful new Web media company Excite.

Nerds 2.0.1 is a book that will entertain, surprise, and inform every reader, whether wired or unwired.

About this edition

• Publisher: TV Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1575001063
• ISBN 13: 9781575001067
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400