Synopses & Reviews
John Naughton is the
Observer's 'Networker' columnist, a prominent blogger, and Vice-President of Wolfson College, Cambridge.
The Times has said that his writings, “draws on more than two decades of study to explain how the internet works and the challenges and opportunities it will offer to future generations,” and Cory Doctrow raved that "this is the kind of primer you want to slide under your boss’s door." In
From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, Naughton explores the living history of one of the most radically transformational technologies of all time, explaining in clear and easy prose, the history and significance of the Internet.
Our society has gone through a weird, unremarked transition: we’ve gone from regarding the Net as something exotic to something that we take for granted as a utilitarian necessity, like mains electricity or running water. In the process we’ve been remarkably incurious about its meaning, significance or cultural implications. Most people have no idea how the network works, nor any conception of its architecture; and few can explain why it has been – and continues to be – so uniquely disruptive in social, economic and cultural contexts. In other words, our society has become dependent on a utility that it doesn’t really understand.
John Naughton has distilled the noisy chatter surrounding the internet’s relentless evolution into nine clear-sighted and accessible areas of understanding. In doing so he affords everyone the requisite knowledge to make better use of the technologies and networks around us, and see lucidly into their future implications. Along the way From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg covers areas as diverse as the science of complexity, the economics of abundance, the appeal of disruption and the problematic nature of intellectual property. From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg gives you all the basic, conceptual equipment you need to understand the Internet phenomenon.
Review
PRAISE FOR
FROM GUTENBERG TO ZUCKERBERG"A fantastic read and a marvel of economy.Â
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"An accessible guide to the internet... Naughton draws on more than two decades of study to explain how the internet works and the challenges and opportunities it will offer to future generations."--The Times
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"[Naughton is] willing to take a stab at the unpredictable.... Naughton warns of two possible outcomes of our networked futures envisioned by the English writers George Orwell and Aldus Huxley--one a prison of our fears under the constant, watchful eye of Big Brother; the other in which our own sense of self gets lost in a sea of our own self-indulgence."--David Siegfried, Booklist
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"John Naughton's easy journalistic style gives me all the information I sort of knew and facts I hadn't joined up."--
Joan Bakewell, New Statesman
Synopsis
John Naughton is the Observer's â??Networker' columnist, a prominent blogger, and Vice-President of Wolfson College, Cambridge. The Times has said that his writings, "[it] draws on more than two decades of study to explain how the internet works and the challenges and opportunities it will offer to future generations," and Cory Doctrow raved that "this is the kind of primer you want to slide under your boss's door." In From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, Naughton explores the living history of one of the most radically transformational technologies of all time.
From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg is a clear-eyed history of one of the most central, and yet most taken-for-granted, features of modern life: the internet. Once a technological novelty and now the very plumbing of the Information Age, the internet is something we have learned to take largely for granted. So, how exactly has our society become so dependent upon a utility it barely understands? And what does it say about us that this is so?
While explaining in highly engaging language the way the internet works and how it got to be the way it is, technologist John Naughton has distilled the noisy chatter surrounding the technology's relentless evolution into nine essential areas of understanding. In doing so, he affords readers deeper insight into the information economy and supplies the requisite knowledge to make better use of the technologies and networks around us, highlighting some of their fascinating and far-reaching implications along the way.
About the Author
John Naughton is the bestselling author of A Brief History of the Future: The Origins of the Internet. He is also the Observer's "Networker" columnist and a prominent blogger at memex.naughtons.org. Naughton is also vice president of Wolfson College, Cambridge, England, where he lives.