About this item
Looking back on the short, exciting history of the Internet, it's good to recall the events that shaped what we like to call the American "Wild West". Then and now, a new world was discovered, explored and, eventually, tamed. And in the early day, strength and audacity were the only laws, and might was right. It took a while, but the end the West was won, the land settled, crops were grown and harvested, stage coaches and later trains made the land accessible, and law and order were established - often at the point of a gun. Eventually, America became civilized from sea to shining And all this happened much, much faster than most people think today; almost in the blink of an eye, at least in historical terms. The Wild West we celebrate on the silver screen, in songs and Western novels, took place in a period that lasted only 65 years: that was it! Will we one day look back on the early decades of the Internet in a similar way? And what will the future tell us about our past?Maybe historians will look back on the "Gilded Age of the Internet" and describe it as a hectic time without rules and oversight, in which regulation gradually spread, oftentimes triggered by the industry itself because they finally come around to the notion that it is better to be part of the solution than part of the problem.
About the Author
Professor Tim Cole is the head of the history department at Bristol University and the author of over 30 journal articles. He has published three major works on the Holocaust and has edited two academic collections. His first book, Images of the Holocaust, was awarded the Longman History Today Prize in 1999. In 2003 he published Holocaust City with Routledge, and in 2011 Traces of the Holocaust: The Making of a Jewish Ghetto.
