Casting the Net


Book Description

Focusing on the design decisions and standards which have made internetworking possible, this new book charts the intriguing history of this communications/computing phenomenon. From its beginnings as a Department of Defense project to its current position as the global network for computing communications, the full Internet story is told here.




A History of Personal Workstations


Book Description

This distinctive book presents a history of an increasingly important class of computers, personal workstations. It is a history seen from the unique perspective of the people who pioneered their development.




Inventing the Internet


Book Description

Janet Abbate recounts the key players and technologies that allowed the Internet to develop; but her main focus is always on the social and cultural factors that influenced the Internet's design and use. Since the late 1960s the Internet has grown from a single experimental network serving a dozen sites in the United States to a network of networks linking millions of computers worldwide. In Inventing the Internet, Janet Abbate recounts the key players and technologies that allowed the Internet to develop; but her main focus is always on the social and cultural factors that influenced the Internets design and use. The story she unfolds is an often twisting tale of collaboration and conflict among a remarkable variety of players, including government and military agencies, computer scientists in academia and industry, graduate students, telecommunications companies, standards organizations, and network users. The story starts with the early networking breakthroughs formulated in Cold War think tanks and realized in the Defense Department's creation of the ARPANET. It ends with the emergence of the Internet and its rapid and seemingly chaotic growth. Abbate looks at how academic and military influences and attitudes shaped both networks; how the usual lines between producer and user of a technology were crossed with interesting and unique results; and how later users invented their own very successful applications, such as electronic mail and the World Wide Web. She concludes that such applications continue the trend of decentralized, user-driven development that has characterized the Internet's entire history and that the key to the Internet's success has been a commitment to flexibility and diversity, both in technical design and in organizational culture.




Internet Histories


Book Description

In 2017, the new journal Internet Histories was founded. As part of the process of defining a new field, the journal editors approached leading scholars in this dynamic, interdisciplinary area. This book is thus a collection of eighteen short thought-provoking pieces, inviting discussion about Internet histories. They raise and suggest current and future issues in the scholarship, as well as exploring the challenges, opportunities, and tensions that underpin the research terrain. The book explores cultural, political, social, economic, and industrial dynamics, all part of a distinctive historiographical and theoretical approach which underpins this emerging field. The international specialists reflect upon the scholarly scene, laying out the field’s research successes to date, as well as suggest the future possibilities that lie ahead in the field of Internet histories. While the emphasis is on researcher perspectives, interviews with leading luminaries of the Internet’s development are also provided. As histories of the Internet become increasingly important, Internet Histories is a useful roadmap for those contemplating how we can write such works. One cannot write many histories of the 1990s or later without thinking of digital media – and we hope that Internet Histories will be an invaluable resource for such studies. This book was originally published as the first issue of the Internet Histories journal.




ARPANET Directory


Book Description




The ARPANET Sourcebook


Book Description

In the early days of computer networking IBM mainframes could only connect to other IBM mainframes, Burroughs only to other Burroughs, etc. Beginning in 1967 the US Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) office sponsored development of a "heterogeneous" network compatible with computers from any manufacturer. That R&D effort, one of the most successful in history, resulted in the on-time, on-budget construction of the revolutionary ARPANET, the immediate predecessor of today's Internet. The ARPANET Sourcebook: The Unpublished Foundations of the Internet reproduces the seminal papers, reports, and RFCs that led to the birth of modern network computing. Most appear here in book form for the first time. Part A, Imagining the ARPANET, covers the initial studies of network feasibility and includes: the introductory and concluding chapters of Paul Baran's seminal but little-known RAND research report On Distributed Communications in which packet switching was first conceptualized. the classic 1968 paper The Computer as a Communication Device by J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor, respectively the ARPANET's earliest proponent and the ARPA administrator who pushed the development project. Part B, Planning the ARPANET includes: scans of the earliest RFCs ("Requests for Comments"), some publicly available here for the first time. RFCs were in effect the design documents for the ARPANET and later the Internet. the 1968 ARPA-commissioned SRI study that modeled a heterogeneous network and concluded that it was indeed feasible. forewords by Steve Crocker (author of RFC #1) and Leonard Kleinrock (noted author and head of the UCLA computing lab that hosted the first ARPANET node). Part C, Building the ARPANET, reproduces the quarterly technical reports from the government's contractor Bolt Beranek and Newman contemporaneously describing the development group's progress, difficulties encountered, and final success. Dave Walden, former BBN VP and a key member of the ARPANET team, has contributed a retrospective Foreword. Other noteworthy material: historical perspectives from Peter Salus, Robert Taylor, Willis Ware, Michael Padlipsky, and Les Earnest, and a long-forgotten RFC which anticipated JAVA by more than 20 years.




Funding a Revolution


Book Description

The past 50 years have witnessed a revolution in computing and related communications technologies. The contributions of industry and university researchers to this revolution are manifest; less widely recognized is the major role the federal government played in launching the computing revolution and sustaining its momentum. Funding a Revolution examines the history of computing since World War II to elucidate the federal government's role in funding computing research, supporting the education of computer scientists and engineers, and equipping university research labs. It reviews the economic rationale for government support of research, characterizes federal support for computing research, and summarizes key historical advances in which government-sponsored research played an important role. Funding a Revolution contains a series of case studies in relational databases, the Internet, theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality that demonstrate the complex interactions among government, universities, and industry that have driven the field. It offers a series of lessons that identify factors contributing to the success of the nation's computing enterprise and the government's role within it.




Where Wizards Stay Up Late


Book Description

Twenty five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net. Where Wizards Stay Up Late is the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone. In the 1960's, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT saw them as the ultimate communications devices. With Defense Department funds, he and a band of visionary computer whizzes began work on a nationwide, interlocking network of computers. Taking readers behind the scenes, Where Wizards Stay Up Late captures the hard work, genius, and happy accidents of their daring, stunningly successful venture.




From ARPANET to Internet


Book Description




Inventing the Internet


Book Description

Janet Abbate recounts the key players and technologies that allowed the Internet to develop; but her main focus is always on the social and cultural factors that influenced the Internet's design and use. Since the late 1960s the Internet has grown from a single experimental network serving a dozen sites in the United States to a network of networks linking millions of computers worldwide. In Inventing the Internet, Janet Abbate recounts the key players and technologies that allowed the Internet to develop; but her main focus is always on the social and cultural factors that influenced the Internets design and use. The story she unfolds is an often twisting tale of collaboration and conflict among a remarkable variety of players, including government and military agencies, computer scientists in academia and industry, graduate students, telecommunications companies, standards organizations, and network users. The story starts with the early networking breakthroughs formulated in Cold War think tanks and realized in the Defense Department's creation of the ARPANET. It ends with the emergence of the Internet and its rapid and seemingly chaotic growth. Abbate looks at how academic and military influences and attitudes shaped both networks; how the usual lines between producer and user of a technology were crossed with interesting and unique results; and how later users invented their own very successful applications, such as electronic mail and the World Wide Web. She concludes that such applications continue the trend of decentralized, user-driven development that has characterized the Internet's entire history and that the key to the Internet's success has been a commitment to flexibility and diversity, both in technical design and in organizational culture.