A History of the Internet and the Digital Future - 9781861897770

From the comfort of our living rooms we can fill our pantries with groceries, file our taxes, watch amateur videos of someone’s talented cat in Norway, and befriend strangers around the world who share our esoteric interests—all thanks to the internet, an invention so improbable that if it weren’t a fact of daily life, it would seem pure science fiction. Nevertheless, whether the Internet is bringing us closer together as a global community or making it possible for us to have lives devoid of direct human contact, there is no question that it has redefined the workplace, politics, and social life.

 In A History of the Internet and the Digital Future, Johnny Ryan explores the development of the internet from its invention in the 1960s to its modern-day success. He charts its growth, focusing on the false technological leads of the 1970s and the way the internet revolutionized political campaigns in the 1990s, as well as the dot com bust and the rise of social networking. He also analyzes the impact of the Internet on the balance of power between the state and the individual and the conflicts it has generated related to censorship, copyright infringement, and intellectual freedom.

In A History of the Internet and the Digital Future, Ryan presents a fascinating and accessible history of this revolutionary technology and explores its impact on the role of the individual within this networked world. Though we have so quickly come to take the ubiquity of the internet for granted—from our laptops to our smart phones, we are always connected—this book celebrates just how fantastic and innovative the invention truly was and still is.