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Unraveling the web's story


  • I’m reading through Thomas Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49 and it features this absurd and morbid aside:

    How did the post horn come in? That went back to their founding.In the early ’60’s a Yoyodyne executive living near L.A. and located someplace in the corporate root-system above supervisor but below vice-president, found himself, at age 39, automated out of a job. Having been since age 7 rigidly instructed in an eschatology that pointed nowhere but to a presidency and death, trained to do absolutely nothing but sign his name to specialized memoranda he could not begin to understand and to take blame for the running-amok of specialized programs that failed for specialized reasons he had to have explained to him, the executive’s first thoughts were naturally of suicide.But previous training got the better of him: he could not make the decision without first hearing the ideas of a committee.

    The absurdity of the high-level executive has been a reality for quite some time. It reminds me of some conversations happening around A.I. in the service of “efficiency.” Almost 60 years later, and we may actually be able to automate C.E.O.’s out of a job.

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  • I’ve been digging into the invention of what’s sometimes called “Netscape Time,” the rapid acceleration of software development once it moved to the web thanks to digital access to that software. But Netscape Time also was often chaotic and without purpose. When Jamie Zawinski (one of the original programmers on the Netscape team) left the newly spun out Mozilla in 1999, he had this to say:

    And there’s another factor involved, which is that you can divide our industry into two kinds of people: those who want to go work for a company to make it successful, and those who want to go work for a successful company. Netscape’s early success and rapid growth caused us to stop getting the former and start getting the latter.

    Which is to say, the failure of a lot of companies that have come since.

    via www.jwz.org

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  • When the wizards of the web met

    When the wizards of the web met
    On July 28, 1993, a group of web pioneers met in a small room for a few days. For many, it was the first time they had ever met.
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  • The crash that ended it all

    The crash that ended it all
    The Crash When the pieces began to fall in the early months of 2000, it happened quick. “It was the weak constitution of all those ‘iffy’ dot-coms that had hit the market toward the tail end of 1999 that tipped the scales,” Brian McCullough notes in his comprehensive account of the web’s commercial history, How The […]
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  • The Dot-com surge

    As the dot-com hype began to rise, entrepreneurs and ordinary investors got swept up in the fervor.
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  • From the valley to the alley

    From the valley to the alley
    The Flatiron building is one of the most instantly recognizable buildings in New York City. Built at the beginning of the 20th century, its unique triangular design sets it apart from other high-rises and skyscrapers. Its architecture is a blend of pragmatic design and deliberate distinctiveness. Throughout the years, the Flatiron building has stood as […]
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  • The web’s most important decision

    The web’s most important decision
    I got a bit caught up this month, so I had to delay a couple of things, but I’ll be sending out a new part of my latest chapter in a week or so. But I didn’t want to miss what is a pretty important anniversary for the World Wide Web. Thirty years ago, Tim […]
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  • Dot-Com Part 1: Burning up

    Dot-Com Part 1: Burning up
    Chapter 11: Dot-Com is live! Part 1 at least. I’m going to be sending out this chapter over the next couple of months in a few parts. But to start us off here’s a look at Amazon, and the paradigm shift it signaled for the web towards the end of the 1990’s. On March 20, 2000 Barron’s featured […]
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  • Reading about the dot-com era

    There is a lot out there about the dot-com bubble, and its subsequent burst. I tried to limit the scope of my research to only what is truly relevant to the World Wide Web. But that didn’t stop me from tumbling through rabbit hole after rabbit hole. In the end, I think I was able […]
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  • History of the Web, the First 10 Chapters

    This is it! As of today, I’ve put all of the chapters I’ve written up on it’s own site. I’ve also finally given the whole thing a name: Vague, But Exciting: The Story of the World Wide Web. If you want to know why, keep reading. I’m working on Chapter 11 right now, but more on that next […]
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  • Mosaic in the rear view

    Mosaic in the rear view
    The Mosaic browser was released thirty years ago. It’s credited with a lot of firsts. When I wrote about Mosaic several years ago, I focused on how it was the first browser to add the img tag, which gave it a burst of personality and popularity. It was also the first browser to really nail cross-platform […]
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  • Maybe we change things up a bit?

    I started this newsletter over five years ago. It started with a timeline and a single post. As I dug into research, I wanted to write something every week, and add to the timeline as I went. Over the years, I’ve experimented with longer posts and shorter posts and all kinds of schedules. But I still write about […]
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