Brian McCullough
How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone
ISBN: 978-1-63149-307-2
Most history books that I’ve read over the years have covered topics and civilizations long past. The Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, and the founding of the United States are all popular topics. Recent history doesn’t get much coverage, especially events from the past 40 years. A lot of modern technology, including the personal computer and the Internet have only existed in the last 40 years. It’s a strange but fascinating feeling to read a historical account of something that was first popularized within my lifetime, and that was how I felt when I read How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone.
Starting with ARPANET and briefly touching on Al Gore’s “invention” of the Internet, Brian McCullough takes the reader through what would be considered “Web 1.0” and deep into “Web 2.0,” concluding with the birth of the mobile Web through the iPhone. Many of the names and companies mentioned in the book should be familiar to anyone using this technology, while a few of them might be a bit more obscure. I hadn’t even thought about some of the things discussed for years! This book was not only a fun trip down memory lane, but a great examination of some of the aspects of this field that I missed at a younger age, especially the ramifications of the dot-com bubble and some of the projects attempted by large media firms that would probably work today, but were just tried too soon.
Those of us in media and technology, like myself, stand on the shoulders of giants. My field of work would not exist without the blood, sweat, tears, and billions of dollars shed during the early days of the Internet. Looking back and seeing what was done gives me hope that anything is possible, even with the walled gardens of today run by Big Tech. There are plenty of opportunities to try new things today, just as there were 20-30 years ago – an entrepreneur just needs to look around and not be afraid to break a few things in the process of learning and building.
It didn’t seem like there was a lot missing from this book. McCullough did an excellent job summarizing a huge list of high and low points during the last three decades. Seemingly all of the big players of both “Web 1.0” and “Web 2.0” were mentioned, and I appreciated the book focusing slightly more on the 1990s rather than the 2000s – both decades featured extraordinary progress, but much of the experimentation of the 1990s is quickly being lost to time and to outdated technology – once we’re unable to play or render old files, or once the last copy of a dead Web site is lost or deleted, the history will disappear along with it. How many people still have an old machine that can use the Mosaic browser? The march of time can be harsh.
Overall, 9/10, would highly recommend to anyone looking to relieve the “glory days” of the early Internet – people who remember the slow dial-up connections to AOL or learning to create simple Web pages on a number of early hosting platforms like Geocities. Without much of the technology covered in this book, high school and college would have been quite a different experience for me and for a lot of other people in my age group, and probably would have changed many of our career choices. Here’s hoping that there’s a volume two of How the Internet Happened at some point in the near future.