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Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Katie Hafner (Author, Publisher), Mark Douglas Nelson (Narrator), Matthew Lyon (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars 616 ratings

Twenty-five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, 20 million people worldwide are surfing the Net. Where Wizards Stay Up Late is the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone.

In the 1960s, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT saw them as the ultimate communications devices. With Defense Department funds, he and a band of visionary computer whizzes began work on a nationwide, interlocking network of computers. Taking listeners behind the scenes, Where Wizards Stay Up Late captures the hard work, genius, and happy accidents of their daring, stunningly successful venture.

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  1. Listening Length
    10 hours and 19 minutes
  2. Author
    Katie Hafner, see all
  3. Narrator
    Mark Douglas Nelson
  4. Audible release date
    December 20, 2012
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Katie Hafner
  7. ASIN
    B00AQU7OFS
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length 10 hours and 19 minutes
Author Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon
Narrator Mark Douglas Nelson
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date December 20, 2012
Publisher Katie Hafner
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B00AQU7OFS
Best Sellers Rank

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
616 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find this book to be an excellent history of the Internet, with thorough research and good insight into the people involved. They appreciate its readability, with one customer noting it's required reading for internet users. The book strikes a good balance between technical details and human stories, and customers find it entertaining, with one mentioning the author's good jokes. They value the networking content, with one review highlighting the development of packet switching technology.

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ReadabilityHistoryInformation qualityHuman sideEntertainment valueNetworking
63 customers mention "Readability"58 positive5 negative

Customers find the book highly readable and engaging, describing it as a classic must-read that every nerd should read, with one customer noting it's required reading for internet users.

"...was made and put together, this is the book that is easy to read and understand and will help you see the providence that combined to make this..." Read more

"...“narrarator”, if there was one, disappeared completely but told an interesting story...." Read more

"...It is exceptionally well written and researched. The history its sharing is amusing and especially considering the impact of the decisions made back..." Read more

"Nice story about people who started an Internet revolution, challenges, their thoughts about specific problems on this journey, team spirit in..." Read more

28 customers mention "History"28 positive0 negative

Customers praise this book as the best history of the Internet, providing the real story of its origins, with one customer noting it presents historical information without being overly academic.

"...It is about the very beginning of the Internet, not so much how it came together after ARPANET...." Read more

"...There's a lot of important, historical information organized here, which makes it a valuable resource...." Read more

"This book was an excellent history of the people, ideas, and technologies that gave rise to the modern Internet. It was also riveting...." Read more

"The book Where Wizards Stay up Late: The Origins of the Internet is a great read if you enjoy knowing the history of common place objects today...." Read more

22 customers mention "Information quality"22 positive0 negative

Customers find the book informative and well-researched, describing it as a foundational text on its topic, providing good insight into the people involved.

"...to make this invention that will save the planet and lead mankind to the stars possible." Read more

"...I think it reached a good balance between the people, events, and technology...." Read more

"...I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is exceptionally well written and researched...." Read more

"This is the most thoroughly researched book on this topic I have seen, so I would rate it to be a foundational text on its topic...." Read more

7 customers mention "Human side"7 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the human side of the book, noting its great balance of people, with one customer highlighting the detailed portrayal of personalities.

"...The book makes real people out of the original engineers and programmers and showed how they thought, what they did to overcome their problems, and..." Read more

"...I think it reached a good balance between the people, events, and technology...." Read more

"...The events are easy to picture and the people are real. The book is understandable and very easy to follow...." Read more

"...The writing shows the humorous and human side of very serious and very intelligent engineers and technologists of the highest order...." Read more

5 customers mention "Entertainment value"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book entertaining, with one mentioning that the author delivers good jokes.

"...It was entertaining without being “popular”, and historical without being “academic”...." Read more

""Where the wizards stay up late" is an excellent, funny and easy to read description about the history of the internet...." Read more

"Essential. Fundamental. Encyclopedic. Fun...." Read more

"The book is very interesting and entertaining. The reader would learn about how internet and network communication was invented by few bright people." Read more

4 customers mention "Networking"4 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's coverage of networking and hardware creation, with one customer highlighting the development of packet switching technology.

"...and experienced computer- and network- experts...." Read more

"Fantastic book on the early history and the development of "packet switching" networking - aka ARPANET...." Read more

"...Encyclopedic. Fun. Here is the step-by-step, intimately revealed creation of a connected...well, universe—the story of how every little bit becomes..." Read more

"Nice book, read easy, every nerd should read. Networking and hardware creation. Recomended...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • R. Bennett
    5.0 out of 5 stars The best history of the Internet I have yet to read
    Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2019
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    I am a Gen-X I.T. guy. I was raised from the time personal computers were thousands of dollars and were bought by offices to allow their employees to have primitive word processing programs and maybe a simple calculator. For all computers to be linked together and able to talk to each other, share information, locate problems between them, and enable human beings a new facility to communicate in addition to humankind's speech, hearing, touch, and thought that becomes a new basic ability for us just as these others are. (Who could go a day without texts or email messages coming to them to realize their new place in the world?). This book takes the birth of the Internet--what preceded it, what promoted it, what was required to be invented so it could fulfill its purpose--and tells it in interviews with the founding fathers (there were not founding women based on the culture of the time) and goes back through records and accomplishments that led piece by piece to the network of networks we have today. The book makes real people out of the original engineers and programmers and showed how they thought, what they did to overcome their problems, and how they worked together as teams to come up with one of the most important intelligence-expanding discoveries in the history of the human race. This book is written for both computer-neophytes (gives definitions of the terms and vocabulary used that even casual computer users will find relevant in today's computer-oriented world) and experienced computer- and network- experts. Without the products of these inventors and geniuses, the connected world we have today where practically everyone in non-third-world countries has access to a computer and the Internet, the connectedness we enjoy as a world full of people would not be present to the extent it is today. For anyone wanting to understand how this most significant discovery was made and put together, this is the book that is easy to read and understand and will help you see the providence that combined to make this invention that will save the planet and lead mankind to the stars possible.
    20 people found this helpful
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  • Matthew74
    4.0 out of 5 stars Great read about BBN and the ARPANET!
    Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2018
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    Excellent and entertaining social history of BBN, ARPANET, and the Internet. I think it reached a good balance between the people, events, and technology. It was entertaining without being “popular”, and historical without being “academic”. For me, the book did a good job of taking me back in time and seeing things from that perspective of those times, rather than from the author’s point of view, or ours today. The “narrarator”, if there was one, disappeared completely but told an interesting story. It is a shame that BBN and the engineers are not better known, considering the importance of their contributions. It is about the very beginning of the Internet, not so much how it came together after ARPANET. It gave me a new perspective on the Boston area where I lived for several years. I looked the BBN campus up on the net, and you can still see where it all started.
    5 people found this helpful
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  • Bas Vodde
    5.0 out of 5 stars The story on the history of the Internet
    Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2009
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    "Where the wizards stay up late" is an excellent, funny and easy to read description about the history of the internet. It is well researched and engaging.

    The book consists of eight chapters about the creation of the ArpaNet, the predecessor of the Internet. It starts with describing the creation of the ARPA research organization in the US government, the people influencal to that creation and the description of Licklider, the early head of the agency which was so influencal to the creation on the net.

    The second chapter discusses the creation of the concept of packet-switching by Paul Baran and Donald Davies and how this was, early on, ignored by most of the rest of the world. Especially the attitude of AT&T is, in retrospective, of course quite amusing. The third chapter talks about the history of BBN, which was the company that build the first 'routers' (called IMPs) for the first network. And how this small company won the contract for building the ARPANET.

    The book continues with the creation of the first IMP for the UCLA and how the company had trouble with the early Honeywell computers that were used as a basis. The early computers had a bug in their synchronization which caused the machine to be much less reliable than needed. Honeywell couldn't believe how reliable BBN wanted the machine to be. Quite amusing. The following chapter covers the history of Steve Crocker and Vint Cerf. Vint created (with Kahn) later the TCP and IP protocols, Steve was the author of the first RFC--the way internet standards are described and how they have been evolved.

    The sixth chapter describes the creation of more IMPs and how the ARPANET gradually grew... and the problems that caused. How the FTP protocol was created (and the mail protocol hacked in the FTP protocol) and how they showed off the ARPANET during a small conference (and AT&T still not believing in the concept). The next chapter covers Email. The creation of Email and how it became the major usage of the network early on. Especially interesting are the discussions about mail headers and inconsistency. At least it demonstrations that easy agreement in creating the internet protocols is an illusion, it took a lot of discussion and a long time.

    The final chapter goes in a faster pace and explains how Cerf/Kahn created the IP protocol and implemented that on other networks and how the NFS created a new network gradually linking more and more networks together and creating the Internet. Amusing to read was how the ARPANET actually became more and more a government DOD network and that it, in a sense, was NOT the 'father' network of the internet (depending on how you define father... it wasn't the first network to be linked up). Also the story of the creating of Ethernet and the fight between OSI and TCP/IP are amusing. The book ends with a small epilogue describing the 25th anniversary of BBN for the creating of the first IMP.
    I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is exceptionally well written and researched. The history its sharing is amusing and especially considering the impact of the decisions made back then in the world today. This book is definitely worth reading for anyone interested in computer science, networking and its history. A must read.
    11 people found this helpful
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  • Miroslav Crepulja
    5.0 out of 5 stars Good book about networking history
    Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2024
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Nice story about people who started an Internet revolution, challenges, their thoughts about specific problems on this journey, team spirit in different companies and institutions which were involved. Valuable testimony of a specific era in network and information technology development.
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Bruno L
    5.0 out of 5 stars excellent read!
    Reviewed in Canada on June 25, 2015
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    a must for those interested in computers/internet history
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  • jcf-42
    5.0 out of 5 stars histoire
    Reviewed in France on June 21, 2014
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    L'informatique est certes jeune mais il y a déjà de quoi écrire son histoire.
    La création d'Internet en est un épisode majeur et ce livre la raconte brillamment.
    À recommander (ou à offrir) à tous les passionnés d'informatique.
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  • Etienne A.
    5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book - although it is not perfect and ...
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 22, 2018
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    I loved this book - even if it is not perfect and is definitely a bit nerdy. Although it would need to be updated in a second edition, I found the history of the net fascinating. Now I really want to understand the technical details of networking, which I should have done years ago.
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  • SAHARA
    5.0 out of 5 stars 課題で出ました、本の状態も良かったです。
    Reviewed in Japan on August 8, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    課題で出るくらいなのでいい本なんだと思います。まぁ、本当は、Webの創成の方が良かったみたいですが、絶版で中古も元値より高い値段が付いてることが多いのでこっちにしました。
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  • Amazon Customer
    3.0 out of 5 stars Unacceptable print quality
    Reviewed in the Netherlands on September 2, 2023
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
     
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    Amazon Customer
    3.0 out of 5 stars
    Unacceptable print quality

    Reviewed in the Netherlands on September 2, 2023

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