My newest book, On the Way to the Web: the Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders, is now available at Amazon.com and in bookstores. (Yes, "the Secret History ..." will not be secret for long.)Published by APress, On the Way to the Web is the complete story of the online world before the Web. If you want to meet the people and get the real stories behind CompuServe, AOL, GEnie, The Source, Prodigy, DELPHI, BIX, and AOL, this is the book! The birth and evolution of ARPANET is detailed (did you know that ARPANET's packet-switching technology first went public with Telenet?) Chapters examine dialup BBSs, Web crazies, and the three online services that were AOL's ancestors. The book goes back to the earliest commercial online services, beginning in 1962.
This is not another "Hail Steve Case" book. Nor does it focus on Time Warner. And you won't have to wade through explainations of Quadrature Amplitude Modulation and serial port pin assignments. What it is, is the inside story of how we got online, written for the non-technical reader (though geeks will have fun in these pages, too.) Find out how AOL and GEnie are related. Learn what Nifty-SERVE is. Meet the con man who was behind one of the first big online services for microcomputers. See the first online GUI for personal computers (and it's not AOL!) Read all about the nationwide wireless computer network that was operating in 1978--the first Internet. Learn about online services overseas, including those in Russia, France, the U.K., Japan and more in On the Way to the Web.
I will be posting some excepts and addenda to the book here and on a special Web site over the next few weeks. Stay tuned!
--Mike
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