As you know, often on this podcast, I run across issues or tidbits from the past that don’t quite fit our overall narrative. But sometimes those tidbits are just too interesting for me to ignore. One of those things I keep running across is Al Gore and his role with the early Internet.

I think it’s something that we all sort of “know.” That Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet. I remember this being a small political issue at the time of the 2000 election, but I honestly never cared enough to investigate the details. Last weekend, however, I went down a research rabbit-hole and decided to find out the truth. Not because I’m a huge Al Gore fan, or because I’m looking to score points against him either. I was just genuinely interested, and wanted to find out the historical truth— not just the partisan-tinged conventional wisdom.

So, here is what I found out.

A full transcript of the CNN interview we talk about can be found here.

Summary:

I was absolutely thrilled that Ben Slivka agreed to come on the podcast with us. Obviously, we’ve had plenty of oral histories relating to Netscape and the development of it’s browser. But we’ve only spoken to a handful of people about Internet Explorer thus far. Obviously, Internet Explorer was every bit as vital to the development of the early web so I’ve been eager to get more background from the Microsoft side of the story. And who better than Ben Slivka, who was the leader of the original Internet Explorer project at Microsoft. Ben recounts where Microsoft was at as a company before Windows 95 and the web, and he walks us through the development of Internet Explorer from version 1.0 through 4.0 and beyond. If you’re interested in the technology- and feature-development of the modern web browser, you’re unlikely to hear a better hour of conversation. So, I know you’ll enjoy this conversation with Ben Slivka.

Summary:

What the mid-1990's debate about the so-called "clipper chip" can teach us about our contemporary debates concerning NSA surveillance of the Internet and the Web.

This episode was originally written as a piece on Medium, entitled The NSA Tried This Before, What The 90s Debate Over The Clipper Chip Can Teach Us About Digital Privacy

Summary:

A new kind of episode today. I sat down with writer, blogger and former programmer Chris Higgins to do a sort of analysis episode, expanding on some of the issues covered in Chapters 1 and 2. Hope you enjoy.

An Interview With Compaq Co-Founder and CEO Rod Canion

This Sunday, AMC is premiering a new original series called Halt And Catch Fire. Set in the early 1980s, it tells the story of a band of cowboy entrepreneurs and engineers who join the PC Wars by cloning an IBM machine and taking on Big Blue for control of the nascent personal computer industry.

AMC’s show is fictional, but it turns out, there is a true life story that is similar to this course of events, and it led to the creation of one of the greatest technology companies of all time, Compaq Computers.

Rod Canion was one of the co-founders of Compaq back in the early 80s, and he was there for the real world PC wars. He’s written a book about the time period, Open: How Compaq Ended IBM’s PC Domination and Helped Invent Modern Computing. In the interview below, I spoke to Rod about the book, the process of taking on Big Blue and cloning the IBM-PC, and how a series of incredible calculated gambles paid off to eventually build one of history’s most successful technology companies.

Summary

Hadi Partovi was one of the original 9 people on the Internet Explorer project. He left Microsoft in the late 90s to found Tellme Networks, which was eventually acquired by Microsoft for $800 million dollars. This precipitated a second stint at Microsoft where he was General Manager of MSN.com during MSN’s only year of profit, and where he incubated Start.com (which became Live.com, which now points to Microsofts’ online Outlook efforts). After leaving Microsoft a second time, he joined up with his brother Ari to found iLike, which was purchased by Myspace, and both Partovi brothers worked for a time as Senior Vice Presidents at Myspace. In between all this, Hadi and Ari were early investors in Zappos, Facebook and Dropbox, served as advisors to Facebook and still serve as advisors to Dropbox. Hadi is currently the founder and CEO of Code.org, a non-profit working to help schools teach coding to students around the world.

Here is a link to a recent interview with both Partovi brothers.

The post page for this episode is here.

Summary:

Netscape has set the standard and taken the lead. But how long will it last? We take a step backwards in this episode and examine why Microsoft was so dominant at the beginning of the Internet Era. We ask the questions: Did Bill Gates really miss the Internet? And: Was the Information Superhighway and the Internet one and the same thing? And we look back on all the things that were distracting Microsoft at the dawn of the Internet Era.

Bibliography:

•  Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft; Bank, David, Free Press, 2007
•  How the Web Was Won: How Bill Gates and His Internet Idealists Transformed the Microsoft Empire; Andrews, Paul; Broadway, 2000
•  http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/22/business/judge-clears-antitrust-pact-for-microsoft.html
•  The New New Thing : A Silicon Valley Story; Lewis, Michael; W.W. Norton & Company, 1999
•  http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/r14/1994/0113/13021.html
•  How America Got On-Line: Politics, Markets, and the Revolution in Telecommunications; Stone, Alan; M E Sharp Inc., 1997
•  http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,978216,00.html
•  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.02/smith.html?pg=8&topic=
•  http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/12/business/time-warner-s-time-machine-for-future-video.html
•  Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace; Wallace, James; Wiley, 1998
•  Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire; Wallace, James and Erickson, Jim; HarperBusiness, 1993
•  Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took on Microsoft; Clark, Jim and Edwards, Owen; St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000
•  The Billionaire Shell Game: How Cable Baron John Malone and Assorted Corporate Titans Invented a Future Nobody Wanted; Davis, L J; Doubleday, 1998
•  The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Superhighway; Auletta, Ken; Random House, 1997
•  http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,984696,00.html
•  http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1998/07/20/245683/index.htm
•  Road Ahead, The (Hardcover Version); Gates, Bill and Myhrvold, Nathan; Viking, 1995
•  The Road Ahead: Completely Revised and Up-to-Date (Paperback version); Gates, Bill and Myhrvold, Nathan; Penguin Books, 1996

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