On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders

On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders is 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 book will introduce you to the innovators who laid the foundation for the Internet and the World Wide Web, the man who invented online chat, and the people who invented the products all of us use online every day. Learn where, when, how and why the Internet came into being, and exactly what hundreds of thousands of people were doing online before the Web. See who was behind it all, and what inspired them.

What you’ll learn

You’ll find these stories of people and events on the way to the Web:

• CIA agents in search of military hardware for sale online
• The first online privacy scandal, three decades ago
• 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
• Who really created AOL (Hint: it wasn’t Steve Case)
• The wireless Internet that was built in 1978
• Why the @ sign is used in email addresses

Who this book is 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.

Table of Contents

1. Looking Back: Where Did It All Begin?
2. In the Money
3. Making Contact with CompuServe
4. The Source
5. Dis-Content and Conflict
6. Evolution
7. Online Experiments
8. Trials and Errors
9. The Second Wave
10. AOL Gestation
11. The Third Wave
12. In with the New, Out with the Old
13. AOL Evolves: Expansion, Integration, and Success
14. Prodigy: The Flat-Rate Pioneer Who Just Didn’t Get It
15. Moving to the Net