To be sure, there’s plenty of tech jargon in Brian McCullough’s How the Internet Happened. You can find out who got the first iPhone call and who posted the first YouTube video. Yet Mr. McCullough takes a broader view ... Yet Mr. McCullough’s book adds to our understanding by explaining how startups’ histories were interlocked and how entrepreneurs and CEOs battled one another not only on a technological and cultural playing field but in the financial markets too.
Expanding on his Internet History Podcast, tech start-up expert McCullough provides readers with many good reasons to look back in amazement on the evolution of the web ... McCullough provides an entertaining and informative technological history which computer geeks and readers interested in everything from sociology to business and media will relish.
How the Internet Happened, a new book from Brian McCullough... could have been a good venue for a necessary round of mythbusting. Unfortunately, most of the time, it is not ... McCullough imagines himself as a neutral filter of information, the type of reporter people are supposed to venerate. He has the facts about how the internet as we know it came to be, and he is now turning them over to his readers. These endeavors, however, are always much better at masking bias than they are at eliminating it ... Anecdotes of all-night coding sessions appear in nearly every chapter of How the Internet Happened... What is missing from the book is an idea of what any of these people are actually doing ... What is most frustrating about all of this is that How the Internet Happened is a good straight-laced history when McCullough can stay out of his own way ... McCullough’s book would have been greatly improved if it had [posed the question 'But are we better off?'] at the start.
He builds a detailed and highly insightful overview of the influencers and ideas that have shaped the everyday technologies we take for granted ... McCullough's nonlinear, weblike organization of chapters keeps the narrative flowing but also makes one wish for a dashboard to maintain context ... Tech enthusiasts and students of business, marketing, and ecommerce will benefit from the detailed chronicling of the early Internet days.
McCullough capably recounts in this wide-ranging history of the internet era ... Most of the individual components of McCullough’s story...are well-documented, but few other histories of modern technology connect them so fluently ... A tasty, educational treat for tech heads and other web denizens.
