Featured Project
The Internet and American Business
William Aspray (Indiana University) and Paul Ceruzzi (Smithsonian
Institution, National Air and Space Museum) have edited a book
on “The
Internet and American Business” (MIT Press,
official publication date March 2008, 592 pages). The editors
narrowed the scope of this enormous topic by focusing on the
United States, on business models associated with the introduction
and dissemination of important Internet technologies such as
web browsers and search engines, on the impact of the Internet
on traditional and start-up commercial organizations, and some
of the impacts of the expansive use of this technology such as
pornography and free distribution of copyrighted material. The
editors and contributing authors recognize that this is more
an imperfect first effort to clear a path through this history
than it is a definitive account. The fact that the authors have
so little perspective – in some cases writing about events
that were happening the week before they laid down their pen
(or gave up their keyboard) – means that future interpretations
are bound to be different from, and in many cases improvements
upon, the accounts given in this volume. But the editors hope
that these accounts, written by well established historians of
computing, economic historians, information scientists, and science
and technology scholars (as well as several others), will help
to shape the coming generation of scholarship on this important
topic.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Introduction
1. Introduction
2. The Internet Before Commercialization (Paul Ceruzzi)
Part 2: Internet Technologies Seeking a Business Model
3. Innovation and the Evolution of Market Structure for Internet
Access in the United States (Shane Greenstein)
4. Protocols for Profit: Web and Email Technologies as Product
and Platform (Thomas Haigh)
5. The Web’s Missing Links: Search Engines and Portals
(Thomas Haigh)
6. The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Utility Computing and
Software as a Service (Martin Campbell-Kelly and Daniel Garcia-Swartz)
Part 3: Commerce in the Internet World
7. [Title to be determined] (Ward Hanson)
8. Small Ideas, Big Ideas, Bad Ideas, Good Ideas: “Get
Big Fast” and Dot-Com Venture Creation (David Kirsch and
Brent Goldfarb)
Part 4: Industry Transformation and Selective Adoption
9. Internet Challenges for Media Businesses (Christine Ogan and
Randy Beam)
10. Internet Challenges for Non-Media Industries and
Firms: Travel Agencies, Realtors, Mortgage Brokers, and Personal
Computer Manufacturers (Jeff Yost)
11. Reluctant and Selective Users of the Internet (Nathan Ensmenger)
Part 5: New Technology – Old and New Business
Uses
12. New Wine in Old and New Bottles: Patterns and Effects of
the Internet on Companies (James Cortada)
13. Communities and Specialized Information Businesses (Atsushi
Akera)
Part 6: Newly Created or Amplified Problems
14. File Sharing and the Music Industry (William Aspray)
15. Eros Unbound: Pornography and the Internet (Blaise Cronin)
Part 7: Lessons Learned, Future Opportunities
16. Market and Agoras: Community Building by Internet (Wolfgang
Coy)
17. Conclusions
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