Five star review on Amazon from top 10 Amazon reviewer (Rebecca Johnson)


Who sent the first email?
What was the first book sold on amazon.com?
What did Al Gore really say about the Internet?
When did spam officially appear online?

I personally found this book to be absolutely fascinating. Not only will you know a lot more about the history of computers you will understand exactly what it took to reach the stage at which we all became able to go online. There are also some tasty tidbits about amazon.

If I had to pick one book about the Internet, this would be it!

~The Rebecca Review


New Five Star review on Amazon.com from top 10 Amazon reviewer (Grady Harp)

At Last! A Comprehensive and Comprehensible Book About THE INTERNET, November 26, 2010
Johnny Ryan has managed to gather the respect of millions in this new book A HISTORY OF THE INTERNET AND THE DIGITAL FUTURE: the near mystical aspects of the discovery that has changed our lives in countless ways over the past decades is in this book explained with a humanist approach to the history, the mystery, the benefits, the emergence of an entirely new manner of communication, and some solid speculations about where this technology to beat all technologies may take us. The beauty of this book is just how accessible it is. Ryan writes in a near conversational manner about technical matters that to many of us are floating around in the ether that is being somehow transmitted to most of our fingertips and screens. And at the same time that he addresses issues and shares facts in language easily digested, he simultaneously offers information to the more advanced computer geeks, making his book as democratic a transfer of information as any book written on the subject.

In what may seem a redundant means of upgrading our knowledge of where we all are in the digital age, Ryan elects to open his book with a very detailed history of the birth of the computers, taking us back sixty years to the 1950s discovery of the possibilities of transmitting information and storing it on machines. His journey explains the military's use and polish of the computer, through the concept of dissemination of information over the Internet, to the age of personal use of the computer and all forms of digital transfer of information. This is far too brief a way of describing how Ryan explains the derivation of each term applied to this topic (these definitions alone are worth the investment in this book!), and the process of changing the huge machines into hand-held wildly popular individually owned modes of communication.

But where Johnny Ryan really shines is his ability to inform us as to the strengths and weaknesses of this new generation of information transfer. He deftly discusses the individual versus government interchange access, how this instantaneous form of depersonalized communication isolates us from each other, but opens us to the curious eye of hackers and government eavesdropping, the perils of too freely spreading our thoughts and needs and desires and even gossip that can lead to dangerous results, and at the same time instead of raging about the evils of the computer so popular with other writers, he offers the possibilities of the Internet and www communication that to this reader at least seems like an invitation to global understanding of all cultures, all peoples.

The book ends with an indispensable glossary of terms used in the book but also used on the Internet - many times to the total ignorance of those of us who take advantage of this brave new world. And should the reader need further elucidation to advance from the solid platform of information provided by Ryan, there is a bibliography for research and further investigation. But for the millions of people who now use the internet and computers this book offers gentle but quite competent background and information about how we got here, what we are doing and what we are capable of doing, and when to be cautious. Highly Recommended for everyone.