This book recounts the adventures of Louis Pouzin who invented one of the core elements for transmitting data over today’s Internet, the datagram. He also created one of the most widely used computer programming languages, the Shell; and is currently, at age 88, a leader in the development of a new Internet, RINA. Louis Pouzin is not well known in his own country, France, but is acclaimed by his peers internationally. He was ignored in France for years although he is one of the very few French scientists who has met Queen Elizabeth II three times. This lack of appreciation on the part of the French public is also due to the fact that, despite the motto “publish or perish” current in scientific circles, he has an impressive list of scientific publications but only one book in English, to present his incredible achievement carried out with an exceptional team: the Cyclades project. This book is the story of a life and a team. It is the journey of a visionary intellectual who has always been one step ahead and has fully adapted to the 21st century though born into a very modest family in a small village in central France at the beginning of the 20th century... What makes Louis Pouzin so special is that he is a leader and decision-maker who knows how to attract the right people to get projects done. He never admits defeat, even when short-sighted politicians absurdly order him to scrap his breakthroughs. In its making, this book which is written for everyone interested in the true history of the Web, has strictly respected the basic rules of any journalistic investigation: interviews with those who made history, cross-referencing of sources, and documentary research.

The rich, untold origin story of the ubiquitous web cookie—what’s wrong with it, why it’s being retired, and how we can do better. Consent pop-ups continually ask us to download cookies to our computers, but is this all-too-familiar form of privacy protection effective? No, Meg Leta Jones explains in The Character of Consent, rather than promote functionality, privacy, and decentralization, cookie technology has instead made the internet invasive, limited, and clunky. Good thing, then, that the cookie is set for retirement in 2024. In this eye-opening book, Jones tells the little-known story of this broken consent arrangement, tracing it back to the major transnational conflicts around digital consent over the last twenty-five years. What she finds is that the policy controversy is not, in fact, an information crisis—it’s an identity crisis. Instead of asking how people consent, Jones asks who exactly is consenting and to what. Packed into those cookie pop-ups, she explains, are three distinct areas of law with three different characters who can consent. Within (mainly European) data protection law, the data subject consents. Within communication privacy law, the user consents. And within consumer protection law, the privacy consumer consents. These areas of law have very different histories, motivations, institutional structures, expertise, and strategies, so consent—and the characters who can consent—plays a unique role in those areas of law. The Character of Consent gives each computer character its due, taking us back to their origin stories within the legal history of computing. By doing so, Jones provides alternative ways of understanding the core issues within the consent dilemma. More importantly, she offers bold new approaches to creating and adopting better tech policies in the future.

In Forks in the Digital Road, Scott J. Shackelford and Scott O. Bradner revisit the key decision points in the history of cybersecurity and Internet governance, revealing the alternative paths or "forks" that existed at the time and addressing the question of "what if?". They explain how things might have been different if other paths had been followed and offer practical ideas to help build a new vision of cyberspace that is as secure, private, efficient, and fun as possible. At a time when the future of cyberspace has never been more in doubt, the time is ripe to take both a look back, and ahead.

This book contains revised selected papers presented at the IFIP WG 9.7 International Conference on the History of Computing, HC 2016, held in Brooklyn, NY, USA, in May 2016. The 13 full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics related to the history of computing and focus on the history of pre-existing relationships and communities that led to triumphs (and dead-ends) in the history of computing. This broad perspective helps to tell a more accurate story of important developments like the Internet and provide a better understanding of how to sponsor future invention and innovation. They reflect on histories that foreground the international community along four broad themes: invention, policy, infrastructure, and social history.

The Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories brings together research on the diverse Internet histories that have evolved in different regions, language cultures and social contexts across the globe. While the Internet is now in its fifth decade, the understanding and formulation of its histories outside of an anglophone framework is still very much in its infancy. From Tunisia to Taiwan, this volume emphasizes the importance of understanding and formulating Internet histories outside of the anglophone case studies and theoretical paradigms that have thus far dominated academic scholarship on Internet history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the collection offers a variety of historical lenses on the development of the Internet: as a new communication technology seen in the context of older technologies; as a new form of sociality read alongside previous technologically mediated means of relating; and as a new media "vehicle" for the communication of content.

"Digital age", "digital society", "digital civilization": many expressions are used to describe the major cultural transformation of our contemporary societies. Digital Dictionary presents the multiple facets of this phenomenon, which was born of computers and continues to permeate all human activity as it progresses at a rapid pace. In this multidisciplinary work, experts, academics and practitioners invite us to discover the digital world from various technological and societal perspectives. In this book, citizens, trainers, political leaders or association members, students and users will find a base of knowledge that will allow them to update their understanding and become stakeholders in current societal changes.

This collaborative research project allows for fundamental advances not only in the understanding of the phenomena but also in the development of practical calculation methods that can be used by engineers. This collaborative research project allows for fundamental advances not only in the understanding of the phenomena but also in the development of practical calculation methods that can be used by engineers.