A great adjustment in human affairs is underway. Political, commercial and cultural life is changing from the centralized, hierarchical and standardized structures of the industrial age to something radically different: the economy of the emerging digital era.
A History of the Internet and the Digital Future tells the story of the development of the Internet from the 1950s to the present, and examines how the balance of power has shifted between the individual and the state in the areas of censorship, copyright infringement, intellectual freedom and terrorism and warfare. Johnny Ryan explains how the Internet has revolutionized political campaigns; how the development of the World Wide Web enfranchised a new online population of assertive, niche consumers; and how the dot-com bust taught smarter firms to capitalize on the power of digital artisans.
In the coming years platforms such as the iPhone and Android rise or fall depending on their treading the line between proprietary control and open innovation. The trends of the past may hold out hope for the record and newspaper industry. From the government-controlled systems of the Cold War to today’s move towards cloud computing, user-driven content and the new global commons, this book reveals the trends that are shaping the businesses, politics and media of the digital future.
Johnny Ryan is Senior Researcher at the Institute of International and European Affairs, Dublin, where he leads the Digital Future programme. To read Johnny Ryan’s blog please click here.
Preface: The Great Adjustment
Phase I: Distributed Network, Centrifugal Ideas
1 A Concept Born in the Shadow of the Nuke
2 The Military Experiment
3 The Essence of the Internet
4 Computers Become Cheap, Fast and Common
Phase II: Expansion
5 The Hoi Polloi Connect
6 Communities Based on Interest, not Proximity
7 From Military Networks to the Global Internet
8 The Web!
9 A Platform for Trade and the Pitfalls of the Dot-com
Phase III: The Emerging Environment
10 Web 2.0 and the Return to the Oral Tradition
11 New Audiences, the Fourth Wall and Extruded Media
12 Two-way Politics
13 Promise and Peril
Glossary
References
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index