Promotional Information

This sophisticated history is the best account so far published of the unpredictable and turbulent evolution of the Internet. With its broad international context, the book will be of value to makers and users of the global communications network, as well as to science and technology policy makers. -- Martin Campbell-Kelly, Reader in Computer Science, University of Warwick, UK

About the Author

Janet Abbate is Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech and the author of Inventing the Internet (MIT Press, 1999).

Reviews

[M]ay be the finest extended work on Internet history and development to date.... useful for anyone studying information technology.—Library Journal

Thoroughly wonderful.—David Warsh, Boston Globe

[M]ay be the finest extended work on Internet history and development to date.... useful for anyone studying information technology.

Thoroughly wonderful.

Abbate (history, Univ. of Maryland) provides what may be the finest extended work on Internet history and development to date. With an eye for the social constructs that shaped the Internet, she explores the Cold War genesis of ARPANET, created by the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, and its technological successors. Abbate makes much of the military origins of the earliest computer networks and of issues surrounding packet-switching technology. She considers major playersÄnot just institutions but people like Paul Baran, Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, Lawrence Roberts, and Donald DaviesÄand pays special attention to the astonishing way in which ARPANET eventually metamorphosed into an egalitarian paradigm of commercial and civilian interaction by the 1990s. Though the constant use of parenthetical notation is distracting, and a much-needed glossary is sadly omitted, this book is useful for anyone studying information technology. Recommended for all public and academic libraries.ÄDayne Sherman, Southeastern Louisiana Univ., Hammond Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.