EF5: How the Internet Became Commercial w/ Shane Greenstein

In this podcast we talk about the economic history of the internet.

Our guest is Shane Greenstein of Harvard Business School. Shane has recently written a book on this topic called How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization, and the Birth of a New Network. We talk about the misleading perception that government single-handedly created the internet, the idea of internet exceptionalism by businesses, and the importance of a diversity of platforms and products for the health of the internet. We also touch on topics on topics such as the three waves of big data, commercialization strategies by universities and predictions about which technologies now are most like the internet in the early 90’s.



Books, Papers, and Courses Mentioned:

• • How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization, and the Birth of a New Network

• • Digital Dark Matter and the Economic Contribution of Apache by Shane Greenstein and Frank Nagle

• • Bulletin Board Systems

• • National Center for Supercomputing Applications

• • A Brief History of the Domain Name

• • Browser Wars

• • US v. Microsoft Corp.

• • Breakup of the Bell System

• • Internet Backbone