Nerds 2.0.1

Segaller, Stephen

ISBN 10: 1575001063 / ISBN 13: 9781575001067

Published by TV Books, 1998

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

Title: Nerds 2.0.1

Publisher: TV Books

Publication Date: 1998

Binding: hardcover

Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis:

A companion book to the PBS television series chronicles the thirty-year development of the Internet from its beginnings as a cold war effort to build a network of government computers in order to save money

Review:

Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet presents the development of the Web as a product of colliding, dualistic forces: the individuality of the personal computer and the universality of a global network. Along the way, other complementary opposites arise, such as the intersection of the "computer lib" hippie hacker and the IBM or Pentagon bureaucrat. The biographies of these visionaries, and the magnificent changes their ideas induced, make Nerds 2.0.1 compelling reading.

Nerds 2.0.1 is a unique computer history book, in that it is really a history of networking. Author Stephen Segaller covers all the current heavy hitters of the technology industry in depth: Novell, 3Com, and Cisco. In particular, the story of the creation of Cisco--and the ousting of the original founders by the sponsoring venture capitalist--shows the high-level stakes and intrigue this billionaire world holds. Segaller also chronicles the failures of companies who didn't realise what their programmers had made available to them. IBM, Xerox, and, some would say, Microsoft are big players in this part of Segaller's tale.

The author puts technological developments in a helpful context: the infamous 100-hour Silicon Valley workweek, the "dog-year" life span of an Internet start-up, and the managerial shufflings of a sponsoring venture capitalist firm all make sense in the world he describes. --Jennifer Buckendorff, Amazon.com