Book Review: "Where Wizards Stay Up Late"

"Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet" by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, is an amazing piece of computer history, documenting many fascinating individuals and ideas. It calls on many interviews and first hand artifacts, with original authors, that may have otherwise been lost to time. This text was written back in 1998, about work being done in the late 60s-70s, yet is a corner stone regarding the origins of computer networking. The book actually talks about "The Internet" very little, but tells the story of its predecessor inventions, such as early protocols like IP, TCP, and DNS. It also talks about the players and groups involved in bringing about these amazing projects, like ARPA and BBN. I especially enjoyed learning about the creation of things like The ARPAnet, The ALOHAnet or the first network switch (IMP). The book costs between $10 - $20, but is also available as a pdf all around Google. I listened to the book on Audible at x1.25 speed, which was 7.7 hours vs the original at 10.3 hours. Overall, I give the book 7 out of 10 stars, because despite being well researched and critical to computer history it is a bit dry. I'de recommend it to computer scientists, computer historians and those interested in hacker history alike. Again, despite being old this book comes off as timeless. Like most of my reviews, the following is the chapters of the book for more insight into the contents:

Prologue
Chapter 1: The Fastest Million Dollars
Chapter 2: A Block Here, Some Stones There
Chapter 3: The Third University
Chapter 4: Head Down in the Bits
Chapter 5: Do It to It Truett
Chapter 6: Hacking Away and Hollering
Chapter 7: E-Mail 
Chapter 8: A Rocket on Our Hands
Epilogue

I especially like the bit on the phenomenon of mailing lists, how these early Internet communities formed and some of the first digital trust and reputation was garnered to identities in cyberspace. I also enjoyed the little known facts, like despite the projects being promoted by the government, it was largely led by hobbiest, private interest groups, and passionate individual's collective efforts. Again, I highly recommend this book to those into the history of the computing, but don't take my word for it, there are a ton of great reviews out there and the book is also part of the Palo Alto Cyber Security Cannon. Bottom line, the book is a somewhat dry historic text, yet covers many great minds coming together over world changing ideas.