Internet History (and Future) with Brian McCullough

The Internet has transformed humanity.

The Internet is the result of a long series of innovations from military, academia, business, and the open source community. In his book, How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone, Brian McCullough tells the story of the last 25 years of Internet development through the lens of companies like ebay, Amazon, Google, and Apple.

Whereas other books have focused on the trajectory of these individual companies, Brian explains how innovations in one company often lead to success in another. Without the lessons from Napster, we might not have Spotify. Without the trust model pioneered by ebay, we would not have marketplaces like Airbnb.

Brian is also the host of The Internet History Podcast and the Techmeme Ride Home podcast. In The Internet History Podcast, Brian interviews entrepreneurs and engineers who were firsthand witnesses to the developments that led to our modern Internet, including early employees at Amazon, Tesla, and TheGlobe.com. In his other podcast, the Techmeme Ride Home, Brian gives a daily overview of the day’s Internet news.

Through his podcasts about the Internet’s past and present, Brian has also accumulated an intuition about the future. He joins the show to discuss his book, the art of podcasting, and the historical lessons of technology.

Transcript

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