How the Internet Happened

By: Brian McCullough

Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon

Tech guru Brian McCullough delivers a rollicking history of the Internet, why it exploded, and how it changed everything.

The Internet was never intended for you, opines Brian McCullough in this lively narrative of an era that utterly transformed everything we thought we knew about technology. In How the Internet Happened, he chronicles the whole fascinating story for the first time, beginning in a dusty Illinois basement in 1993, when a group of college kids set off a once-in-an-epoch revolution with what would become the first "dotcom".

Depicting the lives of now-famous innovators like Netscape's Marc Andreessen and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, McCullough also reveals surprising quirks and unknown tales as he tracks both the technology and the culture around the Internet's rise. Cinematic in detail and unprecedented in scope, the result both enlightens and informs as it draws back the curtain on the new rhythm of disruption and innovation the Internet fostered, and helps to redefine an era that changed every part of our lives.

©2018 Brian McCullough (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

distractingly tonedeaf narrator but great content

Riveting history of how the internet came to be and the bloodbath that followed. The narrator chuckles along at wry humor and punctuates subtlety with perky optimism that seems to alter the intended tone of the book and meanings of certain phrases.

Very well written, very well read

Gives a good story, well written, well researched. Serves as a different sort of sequel to the Walter Isaacson book - The Innovaters.
Brian does a great job of explaining the nuances that existed in the Silicon Valley era..

engaging telling of early Internet events

I liked the author’s well informed description of key events in the evolution of the Internet. Any technologist will likely learn some new interesting tidbits that you did not know. Great narration. Very pleased with the quality and duration.

Fantastic book!

This is an outstanding book, it's extremely well written and researched. Brian did a great job of tying the pieces of history together to provide an interesting and comprehensive story. He goes into lots of good details and also provides a macro view of things. It was a pure delight to listen to as an audio book. I wish he had more books because I'm sure I'd enjoy those as well.

Interesting but surface-level

If you have an interest in the evolution of the Internet, then this book is worth the read. The author does a good job of putting major trends in context. However, many details were spared. This book largely focuses on general information and business-related changes in regards to the Internet. I personally preferred and expected more of an emphasis on the technology than the business side of things, but I suppose that is a tricky balance to strike with this subject matter.

Insanely great book

Though well-versed in US cultural and technological history, I enjoyed listening to this delightful book. The mark of a good historian is the ability to create a fresh context for the events described, and McCullough does exactly that. The context here is a sense of marvel and wonderment. These are inherent in the prose, but narrator Pabon’s reading gives them voice. This is an insanely great living history of how we arrived at this cultural moment.

Clearly written and compelling

I found all of the case studies to be very interesting. And they're tied together by the central thesis that to combat cyber crime you must focus on bottlenecks and put incentives on the actors who are most capable of disrupting attacks at those points.

The nature of cyber crime means that this book has to delve into some pretty technical details. The author does a fantastic job of explaining how the security breaches occurred, making the causes and effects understandable to all audiences. No small feat.

The author also does a great job of "finding the story". The text is rich with suspense and drama: hackers battle with security firms, CEOs are fired, government leaders point fingers, millions of dollars are stolen, embarrassing emails are made public, and lawyers file suits. Honestly this would make great source material for a Netflix docu-drama or something, it's like Black Mirror, but IRL.

So much fun

If you are over 40 you’ll have fun remembering all these stories. If you are younger you’ll learn a lot!

An authoritative narrative

I highly suggest listen to Internet History Podcast before or after listening/reading this book.

Must read for anyone seeking a future in tech - Know the history!

Throwback to all the tech things that happened while I was in high school and college, but now in perspective. Now I understand what was happening behind the scenes of the product releases that moved me when I was younger.
Enjoyed very much.