A Brief History of the Future

This could sound like a "techy" book, but is surprisingly interesting about how the internet was created and is written in a very accessible style even for people who are not computer scientists!

Very good! Thank you!

Feels a little dated in writing style but details are interesting

Excellent. A good companion read to 'Where Wizards Stay Up Late'.

What's really interesting about this book is that it was written only 4/5 years after the commercialisation of the Internet, and to me it reads as if it's actual history unfolding. The real focus is the important players who stood on the shoulders of the giants before them, and the ideas that eventually got turned into reality. Also, as a 17+ years ex-Digital Equipment Corp employee, it was nice to see the Digital involvement, albeit small but important. I've never flicked between the chapters and the notes so much in a book, and even the glossary and sources sections have their merits. A great place to start for internet history

A superbly written book, with facts, anecdotes and a writing style that makes the history of how the Internet developed not so much interesting as exciteing. I found myself remembering what I was up to when certain significant events took place, events that have led to the globalisation of information like almost no one imagined.The writing itself was free flowing and the book laid out well. If I can critisise anything it's what I determine to be a slight inconsistency in how he writes quotes from other people, sometimes in the "traditional" way and at others by presenting the quote as a seperate block of text. I like the style, but there were a few points when I thought "why didn't he block the text here like before"....A very very minor quibble!This book should be a required text for all students studying anything, but especially IT related subjects.

When you have read this book a lot of the pieces fall into place, as to why the world of computers runs the way it does. From the reason it all came about to the way it looks and is managed today, Naughton tells a fluent and largely unbiased story. He brings to life the grand scale of the internet's development in terms of both time and effort. A thoroughly deserved five stars. I would highly reccommend this book to anyone studying in computers or enthusiasts wishing to know more about the internet's history. Lastly I would like to congratulate the author on an excellent book.

An excellent, well written, easy to read description of how the internet was developed. With so many contributors the book could not possibly name them all but in my opinion not enough recognition was given to the contribution made by Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre scientists who collectively were responsible for much of the underlying technology. Xerox had a full inter-company intranet working in its W.W international offices in the late 1970's using the STAR program hardware. Xerox also pioneered a page description language called "Interpress" The software group who did this work subsequently broke away from Xerox and wrote Postscript. Microsoft and Apple were given free accesss to PARC and both companies capitalised on the window/icon/mouse and bit-mapped screen concepts seen at PARC. The Apple Lisa programme being a near clone of the Star GUI. Most credit for the vision of the whole web must however go to Berners-Lee who made it all hang together.