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Title: How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web by Robert Cailliau, James Gillies, R. Cailliau ISBN: 0-19-286207-3 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 15 January, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (3 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: good, European perspective, too deferential to Berners-Lee.
Comment: The last in a series of technology books which I have just read ( the others were 'Where Wizards stay up late' and 'The Triumph of the Ethernet'), this describes the World Wide Web and how it originated. For a start the Web is not the Internet and if you can see the difference between the two, then the book gets very clear. The Web was created as one communications service which could use the internet, by a group in CERN ( a nuclear research facility) in Switzerland.
Tim Berners-Lee came up with the original idea and had the vision and tenacity to push it forward. This book goes back to the origins of the internet - eg. the ARPANET in the US and various other efforts in Europe to lay the ground work for the Web story. One thing about the backround was the fact that the French internet development effort 'Cyclades', initially had more flexibility - allowing software addressing, than ARPANET, however, ultimately the European efforts could not maintain the momentum of the US efforts by virtue of their complex funding and management structures. The US efforts evolved faster, addressing mainly of its initial short comings and gained widespread acceptance.
Another indicator, mentioned in the book, of the relative speeds of European vs US development efforts is indicated in the battle for acceptance of TCP/IP vs. OSI standards for computer intercommunication. OSI is an international standards development organisation, and on the face of it, an international communications standard - even if developed slowly - must triumph over de-facto standards. However the pace of OSI development was glacial, and TCP/IP worked and continued to work as the internet grew and grew. Eventually TCP/IP gained such widespread acceptance that it was impossible to ignore.
The pattern repeated itself with the Web - developed in Europe, the first web sites were all European, it was taken up enthusiastically by various US-based software engineers. As Berners-Lee was so short staffed, he appealed to volunteers to write browsers for various types of computers - and Marc Anderson in Illonois' National Centre for Supercomputer Applications, wrote a browser (called Mosaic) which was suitable for personal computers. The book makes clear the Anderson's team worked frenetically, but the code design was viewed as very poor by the CERN team [ they described it as MarcA mode, i.e. buggy]. However the browser launched the World Wide Web to mass appeal and changed the world.
The book briefly describes how Berners-Lee saw the need of a forum to control the development of the Web and could only find practical support for this in the US (at MIT), - despite repeated appeals for funding from various European sources, again a missed opportunity for Europe.
The book has a failing in being too deferential to Berners-Lee (it is co-authored by one of his co-workers in the development effort) but it is an essential read from a European perspective on how the US has the ability, the resources and the ability to recognize and develop innovations
Rating: 3
Summary: Good
Comment: This is a good book, though I personally think that "Where Wizards stay up late" was a much better read and well laid out than this one. But never the less, this is a very good text on web history.
Rating: 4
Summary: Gripping, Rivetting and Spellbinding
Comment: OK, so I'm used to reviewing books of a more technical nature ;)
This account of the beginning of the web is both entertaining and informative. I highly recommend it to anybody whose introduction to computer science has been the web: this book will fill in a lot of the gaps about the origins of all sorts of topics ,such as hypertext and networking.
I find it interesting that the authors did not always take a linear approach to their subject. Several chapters concentrated on a particular sub-topic, bringing it forward from its root in the fifties or sixties or even earlier, all the way through the nineties.
Then the next chapter would likewise deal with a different but related sub-topic. I found this non-linear approach to be much like the World Wide Web itself. Considering one of the authors was intimately involved with the birth of the Web, I wouldn't be surprised if the book were intended to flow this way....it makes it so that you could conceivably jump around from chapter, just like jumping from hyperlink to hyperlink....
This book might also make good reading for people who are close to web geeks, but aren't geeks themselves. As long as they are intelligent enough to understand computing concepts, it will help explain to them what this fascination of ours is all about. Hey, it may even get THEM interested ;)
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Title: Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee ISBN: 006251587X Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 07 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet by Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon ISBN: 0684832674 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 January, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Inventing the Internet (Inside Technology) by Janet Abbate ISBN: 0262511150 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 31 July, 2000 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop, Mitchell M. Waldrop ISBN: 014200135X Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 27 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet by Stephen Segaller ISBN: 1575001063 Publisher: TV Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1998 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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