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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 Publishers Weekly
From the early days of ARPA, the federal department that enabled the Internet, to the Microsoft-Netscape wars of the present, computer networking has become a powerful, if not always recognized, force on our culture. In this dry and arcane, if comprehensive, history, Segaller (Invisible Armies) documents the evolution that has generated this revolution. Arranged like a TV documentary, with lead-in paragraphs followed by extended reminiscences (the author has produced an eponymous PBS documentary), Segaller's book covers such developments as packet-switching in the 1960s, which allowed data to be broken down and reassembled; Ethernet in the '70s and Netware in the '80s, both breakthrough networking technologies; and, of course, the creation of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. He leaves no circuit unexposed, paying attention not only to the tech-minded "nerds" but also to financiers. Segaller strews small diamonds throughout his history: his description of a pubescent Harvard student named Bill Gates breaking off a poker game to develop a Basic interpreter is priceless. But more illuminating than any fact are the book's two implicit themes: that without more than a few fortuitous turns, the Internet as we know it may not have come to be; and that most major discoveries were made years, if not decades, before the public came to appreciate them. Whether you call the pioneers it portrays "nerds" or any other name, Segaller's book makes an impressive argument for their significance.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
