Books
Chris Stokel-Walker

The History of the Internet in Byte-Sized Chunks

The internet is everywhere. But how did it start? How has it changed? And what will it look like in the future?
No development in human history has changed the world as radically, or as quickly, as the advent of the internet. There’s almost no aspect of 21st-century life that it hasn’t shaped or fundamentally altered, for better or for worse. But the history of the internet is longer than you might think. Its foundations stretch as far back as the 1960s, decades before it would become an accessible and inescapable part of everyday life.
In this new entry in the bestselling Bite-Sized Chunks series, author and journalist Chris Stokel-Walker traces the internet from its (relatively) humble beginnings to the ubiquitous force that exists today, from email and dial-up to social media and the metaverse.
Breaking down complex concepts around how the world wide web works, how it has changed over time, and the effects it has had on the world as we know it, as well as explaining key terminology and spotlighting important figures, The History of the Internet in Byte-Sized Chunks explains everything you need to know about this era-defining technology in short, easy-to-digest chapters.
273 printed pages
Copyright owner
Michael O'Mara Books
Original publication
2023
Publication year
2023
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Quotes

  • EeEeEeE_101 EeEeEeE_101has quoted8 months ago
    Postel would also be behind the introduction of TLDs, or top level domains, such as .com, .co.uk, .edu and so on, which he conceived of in 1986.
  • EeEeEeE_101 EeEeEeE_101has quoted8 months ago
    Sure enough, it was needed. Kline, based at UCLA, typed the letters L and O into his computer – the start of the command ‘login’, that would allow him to log into the computer based in Stanford. But the G didn’t arrive. UCLA’s computer had crashed.

    The first message sent over the internet, at 10.30 p.m. on 29 October 1969, as recorded in a lined notebook kept alongside the UCLA machine to act as a record of everything that happened on the device, was therefore ‘Lo’.
  • EeEeEeE_101 EeEeEeE_101has quoted8 months ago
    the ARPANET days, those overseeing the network maintained a file called hosts.txt, which contained easily understandable addresses for key points on the network. Each machine connected to the network stored this file locally on their devices, and it had to be kept up to date – typically manually.

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