I'm not fashion-conscious enough to be a regular reader of Vanity Fair, but for some reason my wife brings it home now and again. Once in a while there's a good article by Michael Lewis ("Liar's Poker," "Next," "The New New Thing") and otherwise, I don't even pick it up.
Nonetheless, the current issue has an article "How the Web Was Won: An Oral History of the Internet" by Keenan Mayo and Peter Newcomb. It's a tremendous article, starting with the origins of the Arpanet in the '60s through the passing of the "High Performance Computing Act" led by Al Gore in 1991, through the browser wars, dot com boom and bust and even Web 2.0.
What makes the article most interesting is that it is told in the words of those who made it happen, including the likes of Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, Bob Metcalfe, Jeff Bezos, Marc Andreessen, Pierre Omidyar, Elon Musk and others. Time has given the pionneers a lot of insightful and even humility. Who would have guessed?
Posted by Zack Urlocker on June 26, 2008 06:35 AM
