Discover the fascinating story of the early days of the Internet and the parallel developments in the alternate world of computer bulletin board systems. In On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders, an absorbing chronicle of the inventive, individualistic, and often cantankerous individuals who set the Internet free, Michael A. Banks describes how the online population created a new culture and turned a new frontier into their vision of the future.

This is not the story of DARPAnet, CERN, Tim Berners–Lee, Vinton Cerf, and other familiar names whose tales have been recorded elsewhere. Nor is it preoccupied with serial ports, phase–shift keying, or similar techno–topics. This is a story of the building of the Internet: the characters and the events that made it what it became, and the successes, mistakes, lucky guesses, and near misses that changed the culture.

Both a business book and a chronicle of popular culture set in the online era preceding the Web, this title is packed with facts and trivia, with a rich vein of human interest that will enthrall and educate readers from all backgrounds with an interest in the Internet. Michael Bank’s narrative is interspersed with a remarkable collection of vignettes—personal stories from numerous central sources—to tell the story of the evolution of the public Internet from a distinctly human perspective. The inclusion of mainstream historical and cultural events will take every reader back in time to experience the fascinating and broadly unreported early days of the Internet.

What you’ll learn

You will learn a lot about the times and the environment that surrounded the events that led up to the World Wide Web.

Personal stories recount events and experiences in building the early Internet, including

• The first instance of online censorship in 1979
• How in 1980 the FBI demanded the ID of a CompuServe user who tried to sell 3,000 M16 rifles online
• Early con artists
• Online romance scams
• Identify theft
• …and more

Who is this book for?

On the Way to the Web is a book that will appeal to all readers, but one that computer enthusiasts will find especially interesting. Most readers will have played a part in the story it tells, and anyone who uses the Internet and Web on a day–to–day basis will find this book an absorbing read.

Related Titles

• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
• Internet Babylon: Secrets, Scandals, and Shocks on the Information Superhighway
• Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals, and Scammers in the Internet Age