The Online World

De Presno, Odd, 1944-Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.8

Word count: 298K words
Chapters: 30

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Online World by Odd De PresnoAuthor: De Presno, Odd, 1944-,Language: English, Class: TK: Technology: Electrical, Electronics and Nuclear engineering, Release Date: Sep 1, 1993

Editor's review

This is an early English-language work on the internet from Project Gutenberg, whose author, Odd De Presno, long followed the online world and personal-computer communications. Its value lies not in predicting today's mobile internet but in preserving how people around the 1990s understood the very idea of "online": how networks connected, how information moved, and how ordinary people entered electronic space. For today's readers it is more like a fossil of technological culture, helping them understand the conceptual starting point of the internet's shift from the dial-up era to the platform era. The text is presented in the original English and is suitable as supplementary material for the history of technology, media studies, or English reading. There is no need to read it chapter by chapter; treat it as a period text and focus on its early imaginings of the networked society, information access, and remote collaboration, comparing them with present-day experience, which proves more rewarding.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in the history of the internet and early network culture
Students and researchers in media studies and the history of science and technology
English learners seeking to supplement their reading with original English-language material
Collectors of public-domain e-books from Project Gutenberg

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking practical guides to today's internet technologies
Beginners in need of a systematic computer-networking textbook
Readers who prefer reading in Chinese and are unwilling to consult the original English

Reading tips

Begin with the table of contents and the preface to establish the author's framework for discussing the "online world".
Prepare a timeline of the period and note the technological conditions of the 1990s as you read.
After each chapter, write a short note comparing it with today's online experience.
If English is difficult, use a dictionary and focus on the core arguments rather than translating word by word.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book about today's internet?

No. The book was written early and discusses the online world and electronic communications environment of around the 1990s. Its value lies in presenting early conceptions of the network, not in introducing today's mobile internet, social media, or cloud computing. Readers should treat it as a text in the cultural history of technology.

Is the original English difficult to read?

The book is in the original English, and its style bears the marks of early technical writing. Terminology is not dense, but the sentence structures may feel dated. Readers with a college-level English foundation who are willing to look up words can finish it; if the goal is mainly to gather information, grasp the main points of each chapter first rather than reading every sentence closely.

Why is it recommended as a text on the history of technology?

Because it preserves the original imaginings and ways of expressing "online" from the early days of the internet's spread. Reading it against today's platform-based network reveals which visions have persisted and which have been abandoned; that gap is itself important material for understanding technological change.

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About the author

De Presno, Odd, 1944- Author · Norwegian · 1944

Odd De Presno (born 1944) was a Norwegian writer and an early pioneer of online networks, and one of the representative figures in early internet writing. He focused on the relationship between computer networks and the everyday lives of ordinary people, and was skilled at introducing the online world to non-specialist readers in an accessible way. His writing combined informativeness with readability, helping readers understand online communication and how to obtain information at a time when the internet was not yet widespread. His representative work, The Online World, reflects his approach of bringing network knowledge to a broad audience and is regarded as one of the representative popular works on the early internet, inspiring readers who wished to understand online culture at the time. Publicly available information is currently limited, and only one of his works is included in the collection, so details of his life and the full range of his writing remain to be supplemented; nevertheless, his existing work shows his distinctive value as a popularizer of network knowledge and an early observer of the online world.