A real kind of urgency and excitement in their writing. Superb.

A refreshing lesson in the history of the internet, primarily focused on the US (with a decent hat tip to Dame Wendy Hall) but really well written.

A recommendation by Jeremy Keith tipped this from my "to read" list into my brain and it was one of the easier non-fiction books I've read, purely down to Evens' writing style.

Highly recommend if you're working on the web or interested in modern computing history.

13 Highlight(s)

Location 132

Without the human touch, current may run, but the signal stops.

Location 529

she'd always assign the hardest jobs to the youngest and least experienced members of her team. She figured they didn't have the sense to know what was impossible.

Location 610

In these early days, every computer was an island.

Location 745

Betty Snyder thought of herself as a "cross between an architect and a construction engineer." Betty Jean Jennings was more blunt. "It was a son of a bitch to program," she wrote.

Location 1211

NASA was forced to destroy the Mariner I spacecraft, intended to probe the mysteries of Venus, because of a simple programming error.

Location 1703

The SDS-940 was freestanding, tethered only to a few terminals across the bay: more furniture than accessory.

Location 2777

To make successful links, in short, we need things worth linking.

Location 3045

At the height of the bubble, all that really mattered was to generate some healthy interest before an IPO.

Location 3184

A Web site ought never hope for permanence. Left untended, all bits eventually evaporate.

Location 3186

Which is why if you go to word.com today, you'll find a dictionary and not a magazine. The real estate is too valuable to host memorials.

Location 3630

while men generally see computers as a challenge—something to master and dominate—women see computers as tools, objects to be collaborated with.

Location 3641

As one female game designer put it, "We cannot expect women to excel in technology tomorrow if we don't encourage girls to have fun with technology today."

Location 3798

Indeed, the first generation of feminists to the Web understood that access was an equality issue,