Agent Palmer

Are there really 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet? Yes, there are. And not only has Pamela Paul listed them for us in her book but she’s defined how some of these things were not only formative but even perhaps aspirational to previous generations!

This book is a list book, a gigantic listicle if you will. It is also a history book, a philosophy book, a book full of questions and theories, and a definitive generation divider.

From the early coders of the most primitive computers to today’s venture capital wet dreams, Clive Thompson’s book “Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World” peels back the layers on just who is behind the keyboard of the code that is impacting our lives.

How coders work, why they think the way they do, what it is they actually do, and even their reflections on what they’ve done.

I always take notes when I read a book. Part of it comes from wanting the ability to add quotes to the reviews I write, but the bigger picture reason is because sometimes I like to go back to those notes and see them at a later date. By actually being able to read through a small document with all the quotes I pulled, I’ll find the one I remember, and it’s easier than paging through and rereading a whole page.

I bring this up because the notes I collected from reading The Innovators by Walter Isaacson are more than a lot of the other books I have recently read, even some on the same subject.

“From the emergence of the first browser through the boom of social media, this fascinating history reveals how the internet changed everything we thought we knew about technologies–and ourselves.”

That first sentence from the inside cover flap explains in broad strokes what How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone is. But it is more than that.

“The history of technology that you probably know is one of men and machines, garages and riches, alpha nerds and brogrammers. But from the first computer programmer in the nineteenth century through the cyberpunk era of the 1990s, female visionaries have always been at the vanguard of tech and innovation. They’ve just been erased from the story—until now.”

In Claire L. Evans brilliant words “This book is about women,” but it also raises more questions about the marginalized and forgotten heroes of every revolution, not just the digital one that brought about the Internet.