[SIGCIS-Members] Leonardo to the Internet (3rd edition Feb 2022)

[Thomas Misa]

Hopkins is publishing the third edition of *Leonardo to the Internet* in February, and there’s expanded computing history in several chapters.  Chapter 7 sharpens the military’s influence on high-tech firms in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and California as well as on the early internet.  Chapter 8 on globalization treats the /dynamic web/ of the 1990s with Perl, Common Gateway Interface (CGI) and putting databases online (crucial to e-commerce) while pointing out the subsidy extended to e-commerce in the US Internet Tax Freedom Act of 1998, made permanent in 2015.  Chapter 9 on systemic risk critically comments on the rush to put high-risk systems onto the insecure internet, paving the way (unwittingly) to cyberwarfare against communication networks, energy systems, even nuclear power plants.  Chapter 10 /Dominance of the Digital/ is entirely new, a lengthy chapter (40 pages) that gives a complete historical assessment of Moore’s Law (1965-2016) as well as the troubling conflict evident today between the promise of a /democratic/ internet (echoes of John Perry Barlow) and the /authoritarian/ internet being built by many countries.  The book is available for preorder in the usual places.