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How the Internet Happened  By  cover art

How the Internet Happened

By: Brian McCullough
Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
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Publisher's summary

Tech guru Brian McCullough delivers a rollicking history of the Internet, why it exploded, and how it changed everything.

The Internet was never intended for you, opines Brian McCullough in this lively narrative of an era that utterly transformed everything we thought we knew about technology. In How the Internet Happened, he chronicles the whole fascinating story for the first time, beginning in a dusty Illinois basement in 1993, when a group of college kids set off a once-in-an-epoch revolution with what would become the first "dotcom".

Depicting the lives of now-famous innovators like Netscape's Marc Andreessen and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, McCullough also reveals surprising quirks and unknown tales as he tracks both the technology and the culture around the Internet's rise. Cinematic in detail and unprecedented in scope, the result both enlightens and informs as it draws back the curtain on the new rhythm of disruption and innovation the Internet fostered, and helps to redefine an era that changed every part of our lives.

©2018 Brian McCullough (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

What listeners say about How the Internet Happened

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    2 out of 5 stars

Critically empty history

McCullough provides a solid overview of key technologies, trends, and companies in the first two decades of the internet age. The book is most useful for readers who were either too young or disconnected from technology in the 1990s and 2000s to have experienced much of this history firsthand as users. As for those of us intimately familiar with dial up connections, the book largely serves as an easily digestible trip down memory lane that doesn't provide much in the way of new information. As well laid out as the book is, McCullough has a troubling tendency to write this history as a utopian triumph. His prose shares the tone of an Epcot attraction in its uncomplicated celebration of new technologies. Rarely does he ask critical questions about the broader costs inherent in the success stories of AOL, Facebook, Google, and Apple. If we should understand the history of automobiles as a devil's bargain where the benefits of modern transportation are countered by climate change and urban sprawl, a history of the Internet Age must consider the tradeoffs that come with connectivity and unfiltered information. The negative impact of the internet to privacy and democracy (to name only a few) are of no interest to McCullough, who sees this story simply as a list of smart young men making money and having fun along the way. Pretty empty, overall.

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13 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A leisurely stroll around the history of the Web

I was there in Cham-bana (University of Illinois) in the early 90’s - and this is just as I remember it. Lots of extra little details too. Everything you ever wanted to know about how the Web got started - the deals, start-ups, phenomenal growth and eventual burst of the Dot-com bubble.

One little quirk - the number spoken at the beginning of each chapter is off by one. Or was it Zero based numbering on purpose? (Good one, then!)

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12 people found this helpful

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Rise of the Internet- Excellent Narration


This was a fascinating trip down memory lane for those of us old enough to remember the beginning of the Internet. I remember using and loving Netscape Navigator, before Internet Explorer became dominant. It's all here, from the beginnings in academia to the adoption of the masses: AOL, Myspace, the dotcom bubble and Web 2.0. All the major players are profiled as well, from Marc Andreesen to Marc Zuckerman. Expertly told and if you love audio, beautifully narrated by Timothy Andres Pabon. This is a history everyone should read since it covers many of the sites and technologies often taken for granted. Highly enjoyable, I found it hard to put down.

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8 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars

Swallow poll, politically correct

The book deals with the era that most people think of when it comes to the internet, and that's the rise of the web, although it also spends time on AOL. Overall the book is fine, having lived through this era and been the tech field I can't say it really is anything new, and it doesn't go particularly deep on anything - which is fine if that's what you're looking for. The book is written at a pretty low level, meaning it's for the mass market and is very readable for those with no knowledge of the tech, but while I don't think the author is quite a millennial, it has that smug politically correct writing style you see with millenials. Needlessly inserting politics into the book really brings it down a star, it does nothing to move the story along and is just there for the author to try to get out his political opinions, probably because he just wanted to hear his own voice in the book.

Overall the book is OK, it's more a scroll down memory lane than anything of substance, and it's a good refresher in that regard I suppose. But I don't really know the value of the book for those that didn't live through the era since it doesn't really provide enough context to the era, and for those that do know the era it doesn't really tell you anything you don't already know.

On the positive side the book wasn't boring, with the exception of his stupid political rants. Also the reader is fine, does a professional job.

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History repeats itself

Some of the stories in the early part of the book are interesting and have not been frequently recounted. Unfortunately the second half is a hagiography to Amazon, Facebook and Google. The author appears oblivious and downright denies the similarity in todays overvaluation of unprofitable companies in the tech world with the dotcom bubble and this detracts significantly from being able to take this book seriously.

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2 people found this helpful

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I enjoyed the story, the narrator did a great job.

this is one of these books that makes you want to not put it down and during the course of the narrator telling the story I found myself pausing it and going to the internet and researching different persons spoke in the story. I could definitely see myself going back to the story and listening to it again and again and this is the first time I could honestly say that. highly recommend this historical history of how the internet evolved and although I experienced many of these things as it occurred I could look back in hindsight and have a greater appreciation.

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Financial path - success and failure - of Internet Advances

Not just a technology view but more of a human focus on the social impact of what we have today in personal and cultural adaptation of the Internet

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Really well done

I thought it hit the right balance of informational and entertaining. Every once in a while it got a little too “numbers and dates” but overall really well executed

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

No good old days

Just a better new future. Unless you wanna go back to the school library, thank you Google.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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Inappropriate title

This is not "how the Internet happened". It's kind of "how the Web happened" but not quite. It's way, way more about early Web companies and the financial details of how a few of them were successful. There's no depth to it; it's all drawn from public information. If you lived through any part of it, you already know it. It's the least interesting way you could write about either the Internet or the Web

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