Books
Tim Berners-Lee, with Mark Fischetti, Weaving the Web: The Original design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor (New York: Collins Business, 2000) Berners-Lee wants the Internet to remain a public mass medium. He directs the World Wide Web Consortium, whose mission is to make sure that the fundamental software for the Web maintains a universal standard.
John Motavalli, Bamboozled at the Revolution: How Big Media Lost Billions in the Battle for the Internet reprint (New York: Penguin, 2004) A media insider in the 1990s Motavalli discusses how some of the biggest corporations in the country stumbled disastrously in their approaches to the Internet. Shows the foibles of Time, Disney, Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorps, and many others in cyberspace.
Michael L. Dertouzos, What Will Be: How the New World of Information Will change Our Lives (New York: Harper Collins, 1998) The head of MIT's Laboratory for computer science looks at the future and finds the convergence of a vastly evolved Internet and the world economy, featuring faster communications pipelines computer recognition of speech, and smarter and friendlier software. People however, will remain "ancient humans expending their ancient lives in search of ancient human goals through new tools and artifacts."
Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: the Origins of the Internet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003) In depth early history of the Internet, built by "an adhocracy of intensely creative, sleep deprived, idiosyncratic, well-meaning computer geniuses." The book stresses the point that the creators of the Net were mostly uninterested in Defense Department concerns.
Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (New York: Vintage Books, 1997) The director of MIT's Media Lab explains that the effect of our new digital life will be based on "the fundamental difference between atoms and bits." Among other things, he warns, "the real cultural divide is going to be generational" when computers finally achieve their astonishing potential. Being digital might mean the end of broadcasting and the beginning of "broadcatching" in which we will all pull in multimedia in whatever form we want it, rather than having it pushed at us.
Films, Videos, and DVDs
Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (PBS, 1996, 3 hours) This documentary makes sense out of the dramatic birth of the personal computer industry, profiling Microsoft's Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and Apple founder Steve Jobs. It also analyzes the culture from which the PC sprang and the culture that it created. It is based roughly on Robert Cringely's best-selling book, Accidental Empires: how the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date.
Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet (PBS, 1998, 3 hours) Hosted by industry specialist Robert Cringely, who also hosted Triumph of the Nerds, this documentary chronicles the growth of the Internet, and explains how a variety of self-described "geeks" have turned into billionaires. Profiles Bill Gates of Microsoft, Bob Metcalfe of 3Com, Scott McNealy of Sun, Marc Andersen of Netscape, Steve Case of America Online, and Larry Ellison of Oracle, all of whom talk about the founding of their companies. It also covers the adventures of the six Stanford graduates who started the computer company Excite from a garage and in three years built a $1.5 billion corporation.
The Matrix (1999, rated R) Keanu Reeves in an adventure in virtual reality that stands as a metaphor for the way some people get lost in computer and Internet entertainment.
The Net (1995, rated PG-13) Sandra Bullock stars as a programmer who has her identity erased and manipulated on the Internet by the bad guys. In the end, this is a movie about privacy problems on the Net.
You've Got Mail (1998, rated PG) Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in cyberlove via e-mail; this remake of the 1940's The Shop Around the Corner brings home the way technology affects today's relationships.
War Games (1983, rated PG) This early nightmare about the dangers of the Internet stars Matthew Broderick as a computer whiz who inadvertently initiates the countdown to World War III.
