4theRecord

Download: The True Story of the Internet

March 5, 2008 – 10:04 am

This week the Discovery Science Channel launched a 4 part mini-series titled Download: The True Story of the Internet. For those new to the world wide web or even for those seasoned veterans I highly recommend checking this out.

From Netscape and Google to Digg and Facebook the audience is given first hand testimonials from the revolutionaries themselves.

The episodes include …

Browser Wars
This is the story of an epic battle between America’s mightiest corporation and a small group of “computer geeks” who created a revolutionary technology.

This was a fantastic episode. It discusses the launch of Mosaic and its transition into Netscape in the mid-90’s. It then discusses Microsoft’s reaction to the phenomena which at the time only added more fuel to the anti-trust ruling that was eventually handed to them on April 3rd, 2000.

Search
In a few short years a new and unique way of finding information revolutionized the Web and in the process created one of the largest companies in the US; Google.

Bubble
In an astonishing journalistic coup, the founders of the Amazon and Ebay, Jeff Bezos and Pierre Omidyar, tell the story of how their business grew from nothing to dominate the global economy and profoundly change the way we live our lives.

People Power
This is the story of how the internet has changed society and how a new breed of entrepreneurs are shaping our digital futures. It all started with Napster; a way of swapping music that was dreamt up by the teenaged Shawn Fanning.

The mini-series is being shown for the next few weeks. The Science Channel has a schedule of the episodes that are being broadcast over the next few weeks. This is definitely an event to record on your DVR.