Update on next book – on the history of the Net

This is among the most interesting things I have done yet. In September 2009, I am due to submit a manuscript for a book on the history of the Internet to Reaktion Press, London.

Background research has taken me on a path through some of the most interesting events and documents of the last century. A few samples: wargame-stlye briefings outlining nuclear exchange scenarios presented to President Kennedy, memoranda from the Obama transition team in 2008, scientific proposals for resilient communications networks developed at RAND in the early 1960s, records of the US Air Force’s increasing reliance on statistics and research & development during WWII, Warran Buffet’s I-told-you-so letter to shareholders in the aftermath of the dot com bust, startling statistics of growth in value of eBay sales per year, schematics of Steve Wozniak’s Apple I computer…

The path keeps turning to new and interesting niches in the Internet’s history, and the further I go, the more consistent the underlying trend of the technology and its impact on human society appear to be. This book will be not only a history, but like all good histories, may say where we are bound in the future.