HN Books @HNBooksMonth

In the rare moments when I get the naive idea of "Privacy on The Internet" tingling in my head, I kick myself in the but and reread this book: https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832...

I can give you the names of a handful of books that might be useful. Some are more technical, some less so. Some are more about personalities, some about the business aspects of things, some more about the actual technology. I don't really have time to try and categorize them all, so here's a big dump of the ones I have and/or am familiar with that seem at least somewhat related.

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering - https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineeri...

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-Le...

The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage - https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espiona...

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet - https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832...

Open: How Compaq Ended IBM's PC Domination and Helped Invent Modern Computing - https://www.amazon.com/Open-Compaq-Domination-Helped-Computi...

Decline and Fall of the American Programmer - https://www.amazon.com/Decline-American-Programmer-Yourdon-1...

Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer - https://www.amazon.com/dp/013121831X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&key...

Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date - https://www.amazon.com/Robert-X-Cringely/dp/0887308554/ref=s...

Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle - https://www.amazon.com/Softwar-Intimate-Portrait-Ellison-Ora...

Winners, Losers & Microsoft - https://www.amazon.com/Winners-Losers-Microsoft-Competition-...

Microsoft Secrets - https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Secrets-audiobook/dp/B019G2...

The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture - https://www.amazon.com/The-Friendly-Orange-Glow-audiobook/dp...

Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age - https://www.amazon.com/Troublemakers-Silicon-Valleys-Coming-...

Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire - https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp...

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture - https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...

The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and The Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer - https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-Su...

Bitwise: A Life in Code - https://www.amazon.com/Bitwise-Life-Code-David-Auerbach/dp/1...

Gates - https://www.amazon.com/Gates-Microsofts-Reinvented-Industry-...

We Are The Nerds - https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Nerds-audiobook/dp/B07H5Q5JGS/...

A People's History of Computing In The United States - https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-Computing-United-Stat...

Fire In The Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer - https://www.amazon.com/Fire-in-Valley-audiobook/dp/B071YYZJG...

How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone - https://www.amazon.com/How-Internet-Happened-Netscape-iPhone...

Steve Jobs - https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1451648...

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation - https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American-Innovatio...

Coders - https://www.amazon.com/Coders-Making-Tribe-Remaking-World/dp...

Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software - https://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-in-Code-Scott-Rosenberg-audi...

The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency - https://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-Brain-Uncensored-Americas-T...

The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World - https://www.amazon.com/Imagineers-War-Untold-Pentagon-Change...

The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - https://www.amazon.com/Technical-Social-History-Software-Eng...

Also...

"The Mother of All Demos" by Doug Englebart - https://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY

"Jobs vs Gates" - https://www.amazon.com/Jobs-Vs-Gates-Hippie-Nerd/dp/B077KB96...

"Welcome to Macintosh" - https://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Macintosh-Guy-Kawasaki/dp/B00...

"Pirates of Silicon Valley" - https://www.amazon.com/Pirates-Silicon-Valley-Noah-Wyle/dp/B...

"Jobs" - https://www.amazon.com/Jobs-Ashton-Kutcher/dp/B00GME2NCG/ref...

And while not a documentary, or meant to be totally historically accurate, the TV show "Halt and Catch Fire" captures a lot of the feel of the early days of the PC era, through to the advent of the Internet era.

https://www.amazon.com/I-O/dp/B00KCXJCEK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=U6Z...

And there's a ton of Macintosh history stuff captured at:

https://www.folklore.org/

Where Wizards Stay Up Late (https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832...)

“Where Wizards Stay Up Late” is a fantastic book that has some good insight on Lick’s imagination and contributions to technology. And LOADS more!

https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832...

⬐ dbish

Loved this book. If you like tech bio/history books, this one is a must read.

⬐ signa11

actually, i like "Michael A. Hiltzik’s Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age" (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0887309895/) much better than the wizards book.

it is quite a long read, but is very good.

⬐ lordgrenville

I've read both. They're about different topics. Wizards is about the development of the internet. I found it slightly more fun reading, but both books are highly worthwhile, if you're interested in the history of technology.

⬐ signa11

hmm, me too :o)

but from reading the 'dealers of lightning' it was kind of apparent, that parc had a huge influence on development of internetworking-protocols than is widely known f.e. we must surely remeber about the 'parc universal packet' aka PUP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_Universal_Packet) as a precursor to the much beloved tcp/ip protocol suite etc etc.

unfortunately, i didn't really enjoy the 'wizards' book as much as i would have really liked...i had the distinct impression that it was kind of 'jumping all over the place'

⬐ fossuser

I read that one too and if you liked it you'll probably like the one mentioned in the article more: https://press.stripe.com/#the-dream-machine

The Dream Machine goes a lot more in depth and covers more of the story.

I highly recommend reading the book “Where Wizards Stay Up Late”, which covers much of the history that this article touches upon. Great book.

https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832...

⬐ teh_klev

In addition I'd also recommend "Casting the Net" by Peter H Salus:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Casting-Net-ARPANET-INTERNET-System...

I have both books (each now over 20 years old), but I think "Casting the Net" is a slightly more rigorous and somewhat less "journalisty" history with a better collection of diagrams and scribbles by the key figures involved.

⬐ dangoldin

And don't forget "The Dream Machine" (https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution-Co...).

It's not solely about the internet but does an awesome job covering the rise of the PC industry and the launch of the internet.

⬐ m-app

I'm just about finishing the Stripe Press re-release. It's an amazing collection of stories in a beautiful book. Can highly recommend it.

⬐ ddoran

Looks great,I am about to order. From the intro on Amazon: "Twenty-five years ago, it didn't exist. Today <1998!> 20 million people worldwide are surfing the Net."

⬐ 0898

Lovely description: "Twenty five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net".

⬐ newnewpdro

This book is mediocre at best, first time I had trouble getting past the first half of a book in ages.

⬐ ghaff

If you're going to be that critical of something, you should probably offer some reasons. Personally, I've read the book and remember it as being a decent history if not a particular page turner.

⬐ zem

I found it spellbinding, personally. I guess it depends on how well the author's style works for you.

⬐ pasbesoin

I subsequently lost my copy in a flood, but I quite enjoyed reading it.

⬐ newnewpdro

The pages dragged on and on, it could have been half the length it was and lost nothing of value. I find the topic interesting and was looking forward to reading this book based on other HN comments, but it was not written in a way that I find engaging at all.

Edit: the intention of my comment is to prevent another user like myself from being disappointed if they have better things to read. Reading is a time-consuming process, I'm rather annoyed when I bother to read a book that leaves me feeling like I've wasted a significant amount of time with little to show for it.

Based on another comment here, I'd recommend giving Casting the Net a read instead.

⬐ FPGAhacker

With regards to your edit, I feel the same way.

⬐ chiefalchemist

On one hand, I hear you and agree.

On the other hand, 95% of the non-fiction I read usually feels like it could be half as long.

Yeah. You're wasting half your time. But the question always remains: which half? ;)

⬐ ghaff

Some of it is economics. You can't really publish a standard book that's less than 200-300 pages. It's also the case that a lot of "filler" does add to the readability and general intellectual heft of a book; the reader's digest form really wouldn't have as big an impact.

⬐ njarboe

I would many times pay extra for a shorter book on a subject. Maybe some books could be padded with a few hundred blank pages so that it would be the acceptable thickness for publishing?

⬐ ams6110

Non-fiction writing will often repeat the same thing in different ways. Different phrasings resonate with different readers. The goal of the nonfiction writer is communication, not entertainment, and he will try to illuminate his subject from different angles to reach the widest audience.

⬐ pacificmint

It's been years since I read that book, but the one thing that surprised me the most was how much the phone companies didn't believe in packet switching.

They thought anything that wasn't connection oriented was nonsense. The internet basically grew in spite of the established telcos, not thru them.

Around the same time as the book, Wired had an article "Netheads vs Bellheads" [1] which covers the same tension. It's interesting to read an article from a time when it was accepted knowledge that ATM was the future of the internet, and it was newsworthy that a few heretics thought otherwise.

[1] https://www.wired.com/1996/10/atm-3/

⬐ emmelaich

For those wondering what a reference to an "IPhone" is doing in a story from 1996 -- it's referring to the Infogear/Cisco/Linksys IPhone; a VOIP product.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_iPhone

⬐ jgrahamc

I worked on code, protocols and a chipset for ATM and it was very, very quickly obvious that in the LAN environment ATM LANE was a total mess and the supposed driver for LAN ATM was desktop video conferencing which "required" QoS. At the time the competing LAN technolgies were 10Mbps Ethernet and 16Mbps token ring. What became very, very obvious was that 100Mbps Ethernet with switches was doing to win because... known technology (for IT departments), same cabling. I was just a peon but watching upper management talk about ATM being the future was very instructive: they weren't close to customers.

You might enjoy this 1996 presentation from my old employer: https://www.slideshare.net/redpineapple/atm-sales-from-madge...

⬐ contingencies

Technological progress was much faster than political progress. - Joseph Henry Condon, Bell Labs

A generation before, with the telephone:

This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a practical form of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. What use could this company make of an electrical toy? - Western Union (1878)

Two generations before, with printing:

The invention of printing, though ingenious, compared with the invention of letters is no great matter. - Thomas Hobbes (17th century)

Thus...

A little bit of history, repeating... - Alex Gifford (1997)

.. via http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

⬐ schoen

I think Hobbes is right there, if you include the "compared with the invention of letters" part of his sentiment.

Writing as a whole is a more difficult, more consequential, and more culturally challenging invention than printing (even though printing is definitely all three of those things).

Before print (and after it but not yet relying on it) we had literacy, schools, mathematics, written personal and scientific correspondence, accounting, and to some extent written legislation and written accounts of legal and governmental decisions. All of those things were definitely expensive and largely elite phenomena in many places, but they were all real and had enormous impacts. People today still avidly study sacred texts that were written down hundreds and even thousands of years before the advent of printing, as well as history and literature from the same timeframe.

Thomas Hobbes had his own works printed during his lifetime, so I don't think he meant to suggest that printing was a useless curiosity.

You can probably find much more naive and categorical dismissals of printing from around that time. :-)

(Also, I think you might mean "century" rather than "generation".)

⬐ contingencies

Agreed. Also prior to writing there was also folklore, which was surprisingly accurate: there have been many major events from folklore verified by science (earthquakes, astrological events, extreme weather / floods, etc.) IIRC in some cases (Australian aborigines) well over 5,000 years ago (they have been in Australia for 60,000 years!). FWIW I meant generation in the sense of a generation of communications technology, rather than a human. Who measures in human lifespans these days? Hehe.

⬐ kortilla

Folklore does work, but it’s incredibly lossy and low bandwidth. It’s incredible how little of the aborigine history for the 40k years was preserved, even taking into account the mass murder of many of the elders.

⬐ myself248

> phone companies didn't believe in packet switching.

Sure didn't. It's a terrible way to treat voice calls, and as far as the phone company was concerned, voice was the only thing.

Data could ride a voice-grade connection just fine, but voice suffered badly when "statistically multiplexed", a term used (oft derisively) to refer to packetization.

This is still true, by the way. Radio studios still use ISDN links to other studios, because they have fixed latency and incredibly low jitter.

Customers have gotten used to the latency of digital mobile phones, but some of us still remember the truly simultaneous conversation of a landline or analog cellphone. (I remember the rollout of digital, and the... and the con.... go ahead.... no, you go ahead... okay, the confusion as people were just learning to converse with a delay on the line.) It just turned out that cheaper capacity was more important.

ATM was always a dead-end, though. I think a lot of people knew that even as it was being deployed. If you're packetizing anyway, you might as well throw QoS right out the window and embrace nondeterminism wholeheartedly. It's cheaper, and that writing was already on the wall. Quality had been the mantra for the first hundred years of the Bell system, but deregulation and competition allowed the almighty dollar to prevail over every other concern. Enjoy the jitter!

⬐ chiefalchemist

> "Data could ride a voice-grade connection just..."

Perhaps this mindset was true at the AT&T / (eventual) RBOC level but at the R&D level I believe the story was different.

My father worked for Western Electric. For those who don't already know, WE's role was to take Bell Labs "raw" R&D and make it work commercially. In any case, when I was a pre-teen / teen (think early to mid 70's, if my memory serves me correctly) I remember going to an annual open house (for family members) an seeing demos on fiber optics.

Maybe the plan was to use fiber strictly for voice, but that feels odd to me.

p.s. Fwiw my father actually worked on a technology that then competed with fiber. As we know now, fiber won. My point is, there was a sense somewhere that additional capacity was necessary. That amount of investment for the growth of voice might be possible, but I don't think so.

⬐ krallja

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_optical_networking

“SONET was originally designed to transport circuit mode communications from a variety of different sources, but they were primarily designed to support real-time, uncompressed, circuit-switched voice encoded in PCM format.”

⬐ wmf

Yes, I get the impression that the plan until ATM came along was to build exclusively circuit-based networks with most of the circuits used for voice and some for data.

⬐ caf

Maybe the plan was to use fiber strictly for voice, but that feels odd to me.

If you've seen the eye-watering cost of 1600 pair copper bearers, not to mention the sheer time taken to joint it, you'd see why the telcos were keen on fibre for voice.

⬐ gaius

Customers have gotten used to the latency of digital mobile phones, but some of us still remember the truly simultaneous conversation of a landline or analog cellphone

Right now in the UK there is a project to replace the emergency services radio network TETRA with a 4G based solution. Of course, it is horrifically late and over budget, so much so that it has well exceeded the costs it was supposed to save already. But its worst problem is the latency. On an old-fashioned system you can push to talk and say "don't shoot!" and be confident that's what the other callsign hears, but on the new system because of the latency all they will hear is "shoot!".

⬐ de_watcher

It may have delays, but there is no message cutting if you push the button before you talk.

⬐ None

None

⬐ tome

> On an old-fashioned system you can push to talk and say "don't shoot!" and be confident that's what the other callsign hears, but on the new system because of the latency all they will hear is "shoot!".

I know you're just using hyperbole make a point, but I very much doubt that the emergency services use voice commands as easily confused as "don't shoot" and "shoot".

⬐ gaius

According to this article https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/08/airwave_tetra_switc... that is the example given by the Armed Forces as to why this is problematic

Push-to-talk latency isn’t a problem in the “it might replace SMS” scenario the mobile industry once envisaged for it, but it is in an emergency. The classic example the Armed Forces give is to imagine a commander who has a team of snipers on a roof pointing at a target. He gives the command: “Don’t shoot”. Unfortunately, in a cellular, IP based device, it takes a fraction of a second for the app to fire up and make a connection – a fraction of a second which is just long enough for the word “Don’t” to fail to make it into the message.

⬐ ricardobeat

That’s an odd example - surely the whole message will be delayed, and not cut off, unless you push the button before you start speaking?

⬐ sobani

Apparently delaying the message is rather hard for regular solutions. I've worked on a project where delaying the message (and playing a few tones first) was sufficiently hard that one of the reasons we got that project in the first place is because we actually could.

⬐ tome

Thanks for the reference. I don't doubt that push-to-talk latency is a problem but I'm afraid my common sense still prevents me from believing that particular example, despite the Register's quotation of "the Armed Forces".

⬐ microtherion

In my military training for the communications troops more than 35 years ago, we were drilled to "Think, Push, Breathe, Talk", because analog equipment has warmup latency, and besides, one would easily tend to unconsciously talk already while pushing the talk button.

If anything, it would be EASIER for digital equipment to work around this, analogous to how shutter buttons in digital cameras work: Run the microphone in always on mode and keep a short ring buffer of the audio prior to the button push.

⬐ erikpukinskis

Is there any way to get real-time voice connections over the modern internet?

Is it just a matter of setting up VOIP and then mercilessly debugging latency issues on both ends?

Is FaceTime or any other commercial solution close to zero latency?

⬐ uiri

If by "modern internet", you mean TCP/IP, then no. You'd need a circuit-switched network to do that, and those are all obscure/niche networks except for the Public Switched Telephone Network.

Real landlines work even if the power is out.

⬐ None

None

⬐ schoen

Presumably a lot of the unavoidable latency (in any particular Internet path) compared to a dedicated switched circuit comes in when the routers examine packets, decode addresses, perform routing table lookups, execute routing algorithms, and then copy the packet into another interface.

If you had a physically switched circuit you could imagine that the data would travel over it at the speed of electricity in wires, while for packet switching there's some kind of software step and "hesitation" as the router "thinks" about the routing problem posed by each packet.

There are some Internet connections where the speed of light limitation dominates the routing issues, but I don't think this is the case most of the time when dealing with short-to-medium-distance connections involving multiple commercial ISPs. (Especially for peer-to-peer connections on residential broadband, you also don't have the latency benefit of a possible CDN node colocated with or direct CDN peering with your own ISP.)

So I think the best answer to most of your questions is "not really", although it would be really interesting to see a detailed breakdown in a traceroute of speed-of-physical-medium vs. various router tasks for each hop. (Then you could imagine improving some of these by changing the physical medium, reducing the number of hops via better or different peering arrangements, and getting fancier routers in some places that contribute less latency per hop.)

Periodically on HN we see pieces about the extreme lengths that people engaged in high-frequency trading will go to in order to get really low latency. Those folks know all the details of exactly where the latency comes in and exactly what could be done about it. But the huge expense and trouble that they have to go to in order to get some of these improvements suggests to me that we're probably not going to see the same improvements easily on the typical consumer broadband connection.

⬐ jimpudar

> people engaged in high-frequency trading

These people pay to have their servers colocated with the trading servers they are communicating with. That would be like having a VoIP call with someone sitting next to you connected to the same switch.

⬐ cm2187

Though I doubt the difference between a 50ms vs 2ms latency would be perceivable for a phone communication.

⬐ kortilla

Decision time in the router usually isn’t an issue. That’s mostly a fixed cost that can easily be kept under a millisecond. Most of the time gets spent queueing for your turn to either come off of the interface or to go onto the egress interface.

All of your jitter in a stable configuration router is going to be coming from those varying queue depths.

⬐ schoen

Thanks, I don't really have any intuition for the relative contribution of these factors!

⬐ criddell

> as far as the phone company was concerned, voice was the only thing

I wish the phone companies would take another look at the way they handle voice calls. The entire experience is terrible. You can get better voice quality and less spam using just about any service (like Facetime or Skype) other than a standard voice line.

⬐ hnuser1234

I don't know about that, Skype clogged up with random invitations and messages (when I last used it 6-7 years ago..) about as often as I get spam calls now.

⬐ criddell

I get at least two spam calls per day now. My record in one day is eight calls. I've started using Google's call screen feature and that makes it much more bearable, but really I wish I could have my phone give a busy signal to anybody not in my address book.

I get maybe four or five spam Skype invites per year.

⬐ AceyMan

> Radio studios still use ISDN links to other studios, because they have fixed latency and incredibly low jitter.

Can confirm. We have a good friend here in LA who is a voice actor (among other talents).

He still pays for an ISDN line at his residence to allow remote work — obviously, high audio quality is a must have for professional use.

⬐ collinmanderson

At work I have our VoIP phones (and fax ATA) running over a cheap T1 connection. Never had a call quality problem. It's amazing.

⬐ cm2187

I also remember the very high latency of long distance, international calls from the analog days.

⬐ ghaff

In a lot of ways, modern voice calls-whether video or just voice-suck in comparison to old landline Ma Bell landline calls. It’s mostly a reasonable tradeoff but I had a hell of a lot fewer dropped calls in the old days.

⬐ ricardobeat

You also had zero calls outside your house, in the car, or on the go :)

⬐ ghaff

Hence "mostly a reasonable tradeoff." Even many of us who were adults pre-cell phones tend to forget just how tethered to landlines we often were. But we also mostly weren't yelling "Can you hear me NOW??" into our handsets.

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet

By Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684832674

--

I read the Audiobook version of this book. It presents a narrative of the development of the very early stages of the internet. I enjoyed it. I think it would also have been fine in print or ebook formats. It is not too long and seems to present the events in a mostly linear fashion.

You'll get a great overview of the names, organizations, and machines that were used in this period.

⬐ aphextron

> "Twenty five years ago, it didn't exist. Today [1998], twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net."

The scale of the web today is truly staggering. The entirety of Yahoo era internet users would be a single celebrity's Twitter followers now. It's no wonder things felt so much more intimate and real back then. It really was a qualitatively different time and place.

⬐ WalterGR

twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net."

Facebook alone has two orders of magnitude (2 billion) more users than 1998 had in its entirety.

Crazy.

⬐ teh_klev

"Casting The Net" by Peter H Salus is also a pretty decent read:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0201876744/

⬐ SmellyGeekBoy

> I read the Audiobook version of this book.

Slightly OT, but this concept really intrigued me.

⬐ aasasd

Books with denser technical content get difficult in the audio form, though it's probably a matter of habit―but generally audiobooks are a great way to consume narrative material: I think I got through around thirty books in the past seven months. Walks, shopping and house chores are much more productive on the brain front now.

Pro tip: VLC lets you speed up the audio. 1.3x to 1.5x is no problem with many narrators.

⬐ blackbeard334

+1

Also, a more beginner explanation: http://www.warriorsofthe.net/

⬐ erikbye

The book is a decent read. Like you said, it linearly presents the companies and people involved, mostly ARPA and BBN. Not a technical book, so don't expect anything in-depth on protocols, more like analogies laypeople can understand.

Excerpt:

To avoid sounding too declarative, he labeled the note “Request for Comments” and sent it out on April 7, 1969. Titled “Host Software,” the note was distributed to the other sites the way all the first Requests for Comments (RFCs) were distributed: in an envelope with the lick of a stamp. RFC Number 1 described in technical terms the basic “handshake” between two computers—how the most elemental connections would be handled. “Request for Comments,” it turned out, was a perfect choice of titles. It sounded at once solicitous and serious. And it stuck.

“When you read RFC 1, you walked away from it with a sense of, ‘Oh, this is a club that I can play in too,’” recalled Brian Reid, later a graduate student at Carnegie-Mellon. “It has rules, but it welcomes other members as long as the members are aware of those rules.” The language of the RFC was warm and welcoming. The idea was to promote cooperation, not ego. The fact that Crocker kept his ego out of the first RFC set the style and inspired others to follow suit in the hundreds of friendly and cooperative RFCs that followed. “It is impossible to underestimate the importance of that,” Reid asserted. “I did not feel excluded by a little core of protocol kings. I felt included by a friendly group of people who recognized that the purpose of networking was to bring everybody in.” For years afterward (and to this day) RFCs have been the principal means of open expression in the computer networking community, the accepted way of recommending, reviewing, and adopting new technical standards.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1

There seem to be a few formats on Amazon, including an unabridged audiobook [1] :

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/06848326...

Kindle edition sells to US-only accounts though, which is a bit annoying :-(

[1] The Kindle version + Audible upgrade is nearly always cheaper than Audible alone. Not sure why.

⬐ kryptiskt

I bought it for Kindle from Sweden, and it doesn't look unavailable to buy for me now.

⬐ timrichard

Ah, maybe it's just the UK :-(

I read Levy's "Hackers..." in 2015 and also strongly recommend it. I also recommend "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet" [1], which ties in to a lot of the same stories.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832...

If you're not too familiar with the story, Where Wizards Stay Up Late is a good history of the beginning of the internet. https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832...

⬐ nmjohn

This book really is fantastic - if you work on anything related to the web and don't know the history of the ARPANET and how it was the foundation of the internet we know today, I highly recommend checking out this book.

⬐ s_dev

I thought Robert X. Cringely did an excellent summary of the time -- in Accidental Empires as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_Empires

⬐ zem

strongly second this recommendation; it is hands down the best history-of-tech book i've ever read.

⬐ kar1181

Taylor had an immense impact both direct and indirect on the nature of computing as we know it today, it's a little sad he's not better known.

Dealers of Lightning does a great job detailing his role in it all - https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer... that along with soul of a new machine really capture the spirit of that 60s/70s generation of computing.

⬐ bluetwo

I kind of feel that way about Von Neumann, too. Huge vision and influence but too normal to write a dramatic screenplay about.

⬐ patkai

His daughter's book The Martian's daughter is pretty good, though.

⬐ bluetwo

Interesting.

⬐ None

None

⬐ rafaelferreira

Yet another book showcasing Bob Taylor's impact on personal computing and networking is The Dream Machine https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution-Co... .

This one tells the story from the precursors to time-sharing to PARC, using the figure of J.C.R. Licklider as a pivot, and was recommended by Alan Kay as better than Dealers of Lightning. I personally enjoyed both.

⬐ pmcjones

The Dream Machine was Taylor's own favorite of this genre.

⬐ alankay1

And of most of the participants at ARPA-IPTO and PARC. "Dealers of Lightning" was too much of the "hero's journey" trope, and also very confusing in sequence (even to those of us who were there). Both books missed how and why researchers cooperated and coordinated across projects, but "Dream Machine" is much more clear and generally more accurate.

You're definitely wrong about phones. In 2002-5, Palm was shipping a variety of Treos, which even at the time were clear early-adopter smartphones. Plenty of other companies were investigating the market and shipping early experiments.

The IBM quote has no apparent basis in fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson#Famous_attrib...

And you're entirely wrong about 1990. Plenty of people thought there would be a global network. The WELL started in 1985, and plenty in that community had good notions about the future. The initial work on the Internet goes back to the 1970s, and many there too understood where it was going:

https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832...

So if you're going to use the past to predict the future, please at least use some actual past, rather than one you make up to justify your notions.

⬐ dredmorbius

You're amply correct on all points, and GP wrong.

I'd point to Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey for numerous aspects of technology, including talking computer interfaces, tablet computers, and voice communications.

Vannevar Bush, in the 1940s, and H.G. Wells, in the 1930s, were proposing systems markedly similar to contemporary Internet-based systems.

Arthur Clarke's Imperial Earth (1975) featured an all-in-one, solid-state, "Minisec", indistinguishable from a contemporary smartphone: pocket computer, communicator, video and audio recording device (along with ubiquitous appearances of people who were recording their entire lives with them, much to the annoyance of those about them).

Also a run-in with a global surveillance secretariat, of sorts.

There's "Ender's Game", the original novella (1977), which featured a Usenet (or Reddit)-like online communications forum ... used to manipulate global political discourse.

The one element missing from most early formulations of a universal global computer network were the commercialisation and advertising-oriented nature of these, as their primary means of monetisation and economic support.

⬐ orcdork

> So if you're going to use the past to predict the future, please at least use some actual past, rather than one you make up to justify your notions.

I always wonder if people predicting the future also thought that the internet would be so casually rude.

As noted in other replies, the ARPANET predates IP and TCP. Although some Internet applications, like Telnet and FTP, were first implemented on the ARPANET, I don't consider it to be the Internet in any meaningful way. The Internet was conceived as a network of networks, which directly affected the design of TCP/IP. Thus, the Internet proper began with the transition to IP. ARPANET was a test bed, to see if packet switched networking would actually work. It did. So well, in fact, that the ARPANET was used for actual work, until it became obvious that something better was needed to replace it. That replacement is the modern Internet.

I enjoyed this book about the development of the ARPANET: https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832...

No, it wasn't. That's a myth, disturbed in many sources, including [1]. Also in [2]:

Many people have heard that the Internet began with some military computers in the Pentagon called Arpanet in 1969. The theory goes on to suggest that the network was designed to survive a nuclear attack. However, whichever definition of what the Internet is we use, neither the Pentagon nor 1969 hold up as the time and place the Internet was invented. A project which began in the Pentagon that year, called Arpanet, gave birth to the Internet protocols sometime later (during the 1970's), but 1969 was not the Internet's beginnings. Surviving a nuclear attack was not Arpanet's motivation, nor was building a global communications network.

Bob Taylor, the Pentagon official who was in charge of the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (or Arpanet) program, insists that the purpose was not military, but scientific. The nuclear attack theory was never part of the design. Nor was an Internet in the sense we know it part of the Pentagon's 1969 thinking. Larry Roberts, who was employed by Bob Taylor to build the Arpanet network, states that Arpanet was never intended to link people or be a communications and information facility.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832...

[2] http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/beg...

⬐ eternalban

A few oral history interviews with key actors also confirm this.

⬐ mycall

> Arpanet was about time-sharing. Time sharing tried to make it possible for research institutions to use the processing power of other institutions computers when they had large calculations to do that required more power, or when someone else's facility might do the job better.

Arpanet is distributed shared information for science. Nuclear technology is science. Surviving science is a war that requires nuclear insights. Therefore, the Arpanet was developed for surviving nuclear war.

⬐ sverige

As Aristotle might have said if he were here, you committed an error in syllogism number 56.

⬐ fapjacks

Where Wizards Stay Up Late is a fairly dry book, but it contains interesting kernels of information (like this). It's not a page turner, but it's worth a read if you are interested in things like, for example, the information in this comment's parent.

"Where Wizards Stay Up Late"[0] is a fascinating account of the invention of the internet (Licklider a major player). I found it to be _much_ more interesting than I expected from the subject material. Highly recommended.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/06848326...

⬐ guiambros

Another good read is "Machines of Loving Grace" [1]. Much more focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI) vs. Intelligence Amplification (IA), but covers a lot of the work influenced by Engelbart and Licklider.

[1] http://smile.amazon.com/Machines-Loving-Grace-Common-Between...

Some that I liked:

- Hackers : http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Anniversar...

- The Soul of a New Machine: http://www.amazon.com/The-Soul-A-New-Machine/dp/0316491977

- Show Stopper! : http://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Micr...

- Dealers of Lightning: http://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer/...

- Where Wizards Stay Up Late: http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/06848326...

⬐ LarryMade2

I'd add in that list the New Hacker's Dictionary edited by Eric S Raymond http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Hackers-Dictionary-Edition/dp/... - (aka the Jargon File http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/ ) It includes many computing terms invented over the years with their meanings and origins. You can learn a a bit about computer history by readin it.

⬐ ctrijueque

'Hackers' is avalaible as a free ebook too:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/729

⬐ grkvlt

"The Soul of a New Machine" is an excellent book. It is about the creation of the first 32 bit minicomputer hardware, complete with descriptions of ADVENTURE (aka Colossal Cave) and the "Maze of twisty passages all alike" and memorable lines such as "I am going to a commune in Vermont, and will deal with no time period shorter than a season" said after much work on gate delays and intstruction timing iassues...

⬐ cschmidt

I thought Hackers and Soul of a New Machine were both fantastic.

⬐ 0xdeadbeefbabe

Dealers of Lightning because you might learn some new words, and did you know they had to fight to get the laser printer to the world?

⬐ deutronium

I'll second Hackers Heroes of the Computer Revolution, I found that a really fascinating book.

⬐ veddox

Absolutely. It does a great job of showing the spirit of the early hackers at MIT, even though it's not really a technical book.

⬐ None

None

⬐ ritchiea

Hackers was a fun read but I don't think it's really an answer to the original question asking about computing history and expressing a concern that our field has a short memory. The OP's complaint was that most history stops at Turing and everything in Hackers is about MIT post-Turing.

⬐ duaneb

> The OP's complaint was that most history stops at Turing and everything in Hackers is about MIT post-Turing.

Before Turing, it was a handful of people obsessed with computing things efficiently. That history is difficult to extract from the hardware pre-Turing.

You should go read about the history of the Internet. AT&T was a major barrier to early efforts in creating the Internet. See, e.g., http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/06848326... In my view, the breakup of the Bell System laid the groundwork for the Internet to thrive.

For that matter, read about the origins of antitrust law. Monopolies and oligopolies neutralize the market's usual power to straighten things out. Giant companies aren't generally interested in innovation; they're interested in dominance. (See The Innovator's Dilemma for more on the economics of why.)

If it makes you feel any better, it's not like the FCC's going to go around kicking down telco doors and inspecting routers. Proof of net neutrality failures will come from us, the nerds. As individuals, measuring our own networks, and as the techies at innovative companies, going public when telcos try to discriminate against them.

⬐ sounds

I plan on doing this. I'm actually excited for the day when I get to nail Verizon for discriminating against my business.

(I wish I were youtube.)

Here's what I plan to do, and please tell me what you would think if you saw this:

"Hi, Verizon customer! We've detected that Verizon is hurting your speeds to reach us, while favoring access to _____ (competitor). Click on this link to see some other internet service providers in your area. If you'd like to file a complaint with the FCC, click here. If you'd like to get a refund, this link has instructions. If you'd like to join a class action suit, a discussion is occuring at this link."

We'll of course not list competitors where there are none.

Proportional to your popularity, it might even be possible to hurt Verizon's bottom line.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/why-yo... says you may have Net Neutrality issues already if you are subscribed to:

• Verizon

• Comcast

• Time Warner Cable

• Deutsche Telecom, Orange, Telefónica

If you are interested in the early history of the Internet, and would like a lot more detail than provided by this paper, I cannot recommend the following book enough: "Where Wizards Stay Up Late - The Origins Of The Internet": http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/06848326...

⬐ pasbesoin

This is the first time I've seen someone else on here reference/recommend this title. I quite enjoyed it, as well. (My copy ended up water damaged and I can't refer to it right now, but from memory...)

For those wanting to learn the history check out:

Where the wizards stay up late, http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/06848326...

Also, check out this, a true gem on google video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4989933629762859961#

Al gore invented the Web Site.

In all seriousness, Where the wizards stay up late (http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/06848326...) gives a good account of the beginning of the net. For the web there is How the web was born (http://www.amazon.com/How-Web-was-Born-Story/dp/0192862073/r...)

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/06848326...

Also, long hair and drugs doesn't make you "cool". (If it did, meth heads would be cool.)