On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders is an absorbing chronicle of the inventive, individualistic, and often cantankerous individuals who set the Internet free. Michael A. Banks describes how the online population created a new culture and turned a new frontier into their vision of the future.

This book will introduce you to the innovators who laid the foundation for the Internet and the World Wide Web, the man who invented online chat, and the people who invented the products all of us use online every day. Learn where, when, how and why the Internet came into being, and exactly what hundreds of thousands of people were doing online before the Web. See who was behind it all, and what inspired them.

You’ll also find these stories of people and events on the way to the Web:

• CIA agents in search of military hardware for sale online.
• The first online privacy scandal, three decades ago.
• The first instance of online censorship in 1979
• How in 1980 the FBI demanded the ID of a CompuServe user who tried to sell 3,000 M16 rifles online
• Early con artists
• Online romance scams
• Identify theft
• Who really created AOL. (Hint: it wasn’t Steve Case.)
• The wireless Internet that was built in 1978.
• Why the @ sign is used in email addresses.

Who is this book for?

On the Way to the Web is a book that will appeal to all readers, but one that computer enthusiasts will find especially interesting. Most readers will have played a part in the story it tells, and anyone who uses the Internet and Web on a day–to–day basis will find this book an absorbing read.

About the Author

Michael A. Banks is the author of more than 40 books, among them several titles that deal with Internet topics, including The eBay Survival Guide; Web Psychos, Stalkers, and Pranksters; The Modem Reference; PC Confidential; and Welcome to CompuServe. He is coauthor of CROSLEY: The Story of Two Brothers and the Business Empire that Transformed the Nation (Clerisy, 2006), the biography of twentieth–century industrialist/entrepreneur and communications magnate Powel Crosley, Jr. (This book made the New York Times extended bestseller list, the Wall Street Journal hardcover business book bestseller list, and the Business Week bestseller list. Having sold 45,000 copies during its first three months of existence, it received a full–page writeup in the February 12, 2007, issue of Publishers Weekly.)

He has written hundreds of magazine articles and served as a contributing editor and columnist for Computer Shopper, Windows, and other magazines.

Banks has been online since 1979, when he caught his first glimpse of CompuServe. During the 1980s, he was involved in a number of Internet firsts, including online book promotion. He has helped maintain BBSs, was a SIG manager on DELPHI for a number of years, and worked in a consulting capacity for CompuServe and The Source. He wrote one of the first guides to online services, The Modem Reference (Brady/Simon & Schuster), which introduced hundreds of thousands of users to modems and the online world. Because of his reputation as a modem and telecommunications expert, GEnie and BIX (Byte Information Exchange) created special online forums for Banks—early blogs. He has also advised a number of businesses in the area of online marketing.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Apress (July 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430208694
• ISBN-13: 978-1430208693
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #242,192 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Historical Perspective, October 13, 2008

By	Angelo Serra (Hilliard, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is in the same vein as the Hackers book by Steven Levy (Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution). For a lot of people, this is a peek under the covers during what a few lived through. This peek gives the backgrounds and some of the ins and outs of what happened during the very heady days of "home-based" internet access.

Being an early user of the internet myself (I had a university account in the mid-80's), and a user of CompuServe, Prodigy, and various BBS's, this was quite the trip down memory lane and explains why they did not survive.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a stroll down memory lane!, October 13, 2008

By	Matthew M. Kinney (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As someone who went through quite a few phone cords on my trusty Vic Modem and remembers my first acoustic coupler modem for my Texas Instruments computer, I was very interested in this book and boy, it did not disappoint! I have been online in some form or fashion since 1979/1980, operated my own BBS in the dial-up days, and helped establish the first download software store on Prodigy, so this book was a great stroll down memory lane. Even if you can't recall what it was like to not always have a computer in your home and always be online, this is a great book to learn about where things started and how we got to the now ubiquitous world wide web.

The book starts out with a great foreword by celeb-nerd (I say that with the greatest fondness!) Orson Scott Card, which made me laugh out loud at some of the antics we all did back then. Who didn't go into stores after learning some BASIC to do a silly print statement with a goto to watch your handiwork repeat over and over? It jumps quickly and pretty much in chronological order to ARPANET, TeleNet, CompuServe, and GEIS, among others with some pretty interesting trivia tidbits (do you know what the first internet message was or why the @ sign is used in email addresses?). It then progresses into what most folks in their 30s who were on the scene will remember such as Delphi, Q-Link, The WELL, and into America Online, Prodigy, and onto the onramp to the information superhighway as we now know it.

One of the things I liked best about the book was its coverage of some of the "colorful" personalities that built and/or worked on the various online systems of the day--there are many others besides Steve Case. Often when one reads histories related to subjects like this, they are dry and much of the personality of various players are lost--this is not the case with this book. I also enjoyed coverage of some of the great ideas that eventually failed and reasons why (anyone remember Plink or eWorld?).

For anyone that was a participant of the scene during these times, or simply wants to know how the web as we know it got to this point, I heartily recommend this book. I have read several books on this subject and they either miss too much or start with America Online/Prodigy as if that was the genesis of the web. As with any book of reasonable length on this topic, some things are not covered which I would have liked to see more of such as the early days of the Microsoft Network (MSN), WIX (Windows Information eXchange), and early IRC implementations, but this is no way detracts from the book and is more of a personal interest since I was a user of them back in the day. Overall, I would give this book a 10/10 without hesitation, especially considering the depth/breadth of the author's knowledge of the subject matter and easy-reading manner in which the author communicates it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Insight Into The History Of The Internet!, November 18, 2008

By	Mary L. Mcdonald (Northern Indiana) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Michael A. Banks did a great job keeping me interested in reading about the beginning of the internet. The beginnings of the internet were in the government and the universities. When he talks about two universities communicating for the first time cross-country, I could not help but feel it was as monumental as the east railroad line meeting the west railroad line!

It was very interesting to see how some very good ideas failed miserably, while others flourished. The beginnings of community sites like Compuserve were truly the predecessor of many of our social networking sites today.

The in depth coverage of Billy von Meister kept me in suspense with each business venture he conjured up. Billy was truly a pioneering internet entrepreneurial spirit. He was quite an adventurer, and his flamboyant lifestyle went along with his spend, spend, spend business tactics. He was a visionary who knew how to acquire venture capital and how to build a business from ground up. I enjoyed reading about it.

Who doesn't remember getting those AOL floppy disks in their mail?? Although I was never a member, it wasn't hard to see the impact of AOL on my friends and the world at large who were members. While I was busy plunking out COBOL II code on a mainframe at work, my friends were enjoying the ease of use and communities of AOL.

The interactivity available via the internet seemed to take many by surprise in the early days, but not anymore. Today, the best sites provide plenty of engaging interactivity (like this one, letting me give a review that all the world can see!). This book was really engaging to read, I recommend it.