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prehistory: ARPA to @Home This page looks at the history of the internet and of the web, one of the net's major components.       general studies  For a concise, intelligible and elegantly understated introduction to the web - its nature and history - you can't go past Tim Berners-Lee's Weaving The Web (Orion, London 99), a memoir and history of the WWW by Tim Berners-Lee. It's more impressive than How The Web Was Born (Oxford, Oxford Uni Press 00) by Robert Cailliau & James Gillies. Janet Abbate's Inventing the Internet (Cambridge, MIT Press 99) is a thoughtful academic study.  It builds on the under-recognised Standards Policy for Information Infrastructure (Cambridge, MIT Press 95) edited by Abbate & Brian Kahin as part of the excellent Harvard Information Infrastructure Project.  In contrast, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet (New York, Touchstone 98) by Katie Hafner & Matthew Lyon is high journalism: less detailed, much more digestible. There's a concise account in Rita Tehan's 1999 US Congressional Research Service report on Spinning the Web: The History & Infrastructure of the Internet.   John Naughton's A Brief History of the Future: The Origins of the Internet (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 99) is a useful overview by a UK academic. If you're new to the web it will probably be more useful than Hafner & Lyon.  Peter Salus' Casting the Net: From Arpanet to Internet & Beyond (Reading, Addison-Wesley 95) gives a W3 worms-eye view - complete with contemporary correspondence and draft specs - of building the Net and its precursors from the 1940s through to 1994.       background Rescuing Prometheus (New York, Pantheon 98) by science historian Thomas Hughes deals with the development of digital computing and ARPANET from two perspectives: the 'military-industrial complex' and the growth of systems analysis as a way of understanding and managing.  There's a more detailed, although less entertaining, exploration of 'thinking digital' during the 1950's and 1960's in Steve Heims' The Cybernetics Group (Cambridge, MIT Press 91) and The Closed World: Computers & the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge, MIT Press 97) by Paul Edwards. The Early History of Data Networks (Los Alamitos, IEEE Computer Society Press 94) by Gerald Holzmann & Bjorn Pehrson explores early networks. Transforming Computer Technology: Information Processing for the Pentagon 1962-86 (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Uni Press 96) by Arthur Norberg & Judy O'Neill is an excellent introduction to DARPA and the interaction of the military, industry and academia in developing both the net and modern computing.  History of the Internet: A Chronology 1843 To The Present (New York, ABC-Clio 99) by Christos Moschovitis & Hilary Poole has a wider scope: it's a breezy history of modern telecommunications.   Netizens: On the History & Impact of Usenet & the Internet (Los Alamitos, IEEE Press 98) by Michael & Ronda Hauben is a curious mix of serious research and zany info-lib. We suggest that you read the initial chapters and skim the deliciously silly 'Proposed Declaration on the Rights of Netizens'. The Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) sponsor the Community Memory Project, an ongoing dialogue about internet and computing history. Gregory Gromov's The Roads & Crossroads of Internet History site is rich but typographically manic - a fine example of why your designer shouldn't have four paws, a bark and a wagging tail.  Online, as in print, less is more.   For a more accessible history of the internet we'd instead recommend the documents on the Internet Society history page, in particular the crisp A Brief History of the Internet by Cerf, Clark, Kahn, Lynch & others. There are succinct biographies at ibiblio.    next page  (bodies)