The Internet and American Business

When we think of the Internet, we generally think of Amazon, Google, Hotmail, Napster, MySpace, and other sites for buying products, searching forinformation, downloading entertainment, chatting with friends, or postingphotographs. In the academic literature about the Internet, however, these uses arerarely covered. The Internet and American Business fills this gap, pickin

When we think of the Internet, we generally think of Amazon, Google, Hotmail, Napster, MySpace, and other sites for buying products, searching forinformation, downloading entertainment, chatting with friends, or postingphotographs. In the academic literature about the Internet, however, these uses arerarely covered. The Internet and American Business fills this gap, picking up wheremost scholarly histories of the Internet leave off--with the commercialization ofthe Internet established and its effect on traditional business a fact of life.These essays, describing challenges successfully met by some companies and failuresto adapt by others, are a first attempt to understand a dynamic and exciting periodof American business history. Tracing the impact of the commercialized Internetsince 1995 on American business and society, the book describes new business models, new companies and adjustments by established companies, the rise of e-commerce, andcommunity building; it considers dot-com busts and difficulties encountered bytraditional industries; and it discusses such newly created problems as copyrightviolations associated with music file-sharing and the proliferation of Internetpornography. ContributorsAtsushi Akera, William Aspray, Randal A. Beam, MartinCampbell-Kelly, Paul E. Ceruzzi, James W. Cortada, Wolfgang Coy, Blaise Cronin, Nathan Ensmenger, Daniel D. Garcia-Swartz, Brent Goldfarb, Shane Greenstein, ThomasHaigh, Ward Hanson, David Kirsch, Christine Ogan, Jeffrey R. Yost William Aspray isRudy Professor of Informatics at Indiana University in Bloomington. He is the editor(with J. McGrath Cohoon) of Women and Information Technology: Research onUnderrepresentation (MIT Press, 2006 Paul E. Ceruzzi is Curator of the National Airand Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. He is the author of AHistory of Modern Computing (second edition, MIT Press, 2003) and Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945-2005 (MIT Press, 2008)