How the Internet happened

What Hacker News says

1. ImustaskforhelpJul 2026
   > I think we have forgotten how great real life was at getting stuff done. The computer was supposed to assist them and for a time it did. That is until we forgot what it was for and made it replace life altogether.

   I read the book how the internet happened (great book btw) and I would politely like to refuse this claim :)

   Or perhaps there could be a separation between the computer and the internet (or more accurately the browsers)

   When only computers existed, there were assists of working tools (maybe older versions of docs,excel etc.) but when the internet browsers happened (Netscape), from the very start of it, there were ideas of advertisement and monetization of it.

   The only reason that internet turned out to be so open in the start was that Netscape wanted to have it open to get as much turf as possible before Microsoft realizes and they did everything and even then Microsoft had too much monopoly and they released Internet Explorer.

   Before internet or pre-dawn of it, there were people with computer magazines and people tinkering and it might be one of you judging from writing code by hand :)

   There was an real passion in it and people like you followed it, until the internet experiment really worked and then sooner or later things from internet started reverting to some form of enshittification and immense advertisements and stock markets wanting more advertisements leading to wanting more retention and wanting to create/replace life altogether (most literally Meta and its failed metaverse)

   While writing this comment, I have come to insight: Internet had come to replace to the Television (Information Highway) but lately it has ended up becoming one. The last line of "That is until we forgot what it was for and made it replace life altogether." might apply to television as well and the only bottleneck during that time was the technology which seems to have been the internet as now we have youtube,insta,tiktok with infinite scroll feeds, so perhaps things have always been like this way but you were never exposed so much to that side but now its coming for the coding side of things which you are passionate about.

   In that sense nothing is as good or as bad as it seems but we are certainly going on a downward trend perhaps depending on the metric and I would prefer living in the golden past so I envy you :)

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2. ImustaskforhelpJul 2026
   > the hyperscalars are acting like Amazon in 1998

   I hope you remember furniture.com, pets.com, webvan.com, kozmo.com and many others.

   Amazon.com (during 1998) in some sense is the exception, not the norm from the bloodbath in stock markets during the dot com bubble.

   (I highly recommend the book How the internet happened for more knowledge about things before, during and after the dot com bubble.)

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3. bwh2Nov 2024
   Two good ones: 1) Where Wizards Stay Up Late and 2) How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone
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4. bwh2Nov 2022
   A few books that I enjoyed:

     * How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone
     * Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet
     * Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture

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5. omezeApr 2022
   A History of Modern Computing is great

   Would add:

   - How The Internet Happened (history of the internet)

   - To The Digital Age (transistor history)

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6. sienNov 2020
   How the Internet Happened (2018) by Brian McCullough

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38212134-how-the-interne...

   The 'Internet History Podcast' that was made while writing the book is also excellent.

   The Friendly Orange Glow (2017) by Brian Dear is also very good. He's also on HN.

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34373814-the-friendly-or...

   Accidental Empires (1996) by Robert X Cringely is also pretty good:

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27652.Accidental_Empires...

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