- Chapter 1.The Day the Internet Died
- Chapter 2.Silicon Valley Takedown
Unexpected Histories
Volume 1: The Day the Internet Died
Big Tech often frames itself as unprecedented and unstoppable. History suggests otherwise.
This volume collects three historical essays examining moments when large technology and infrastructure systems failed, consolidated, or triggered institutional response. From the 1988 Morris Worm and the early internet’s first shutdown, to railroad monopolies that shaped modern antitrust law, these essays trace recurring patterns in how systems scale, break, and attract regulation. Written as historical nonfiction, the book avoids prediction and policy advocacy, instead inviting readers to view modern platforms through the lens of earlier infrastructure systems, and to become students of history.
Minimum price
$4.00
$5.00
You pay
$5.00Author earns
$3.50PDF
EPUB
WEB
43
Pages
11,326Words
About
About the Book
How do large systems innovate, and how do they fail? Big Tech often presents itself as something unprecedented and unstoppable. This book calmly and firmly takes a different view.
Volume 1 examines three moments when technology and infrastructure systems reshaped society, drew institutional response, or collapsed under their own scale.
The Day the Internet Died revisits the 1988 Morris Worm, a graduate-student experiment that revealed how fragile the early internet really was. The most damaging phase was not the attack itself, but the period of uncertainty. Observers did not yet understand what they were observing. Then, once they understood, those operators "killed the internet" by taking the backbones offline from each other. The author was present during those early days, watching the response unfold.
Silicon Valley Takedown looks at modern antitrust scrutiny through a historical lens. The coming reckoning for Big Tech is not primarily a technology story, but a replay of earlier infrastructure battles. This chapter centers on Northern Pacific Railway v. United States (1958) while avoiding legal trivia. The U.S. Department of Justice cites that Supreme Court case as precedent for Big Tech antitrust enforcement. Government enforcement moves slowly. But when it moves, it reshapes entire landscapes.
Transcontinental Railroad traces how ocean trade gave way to railroads, and how infrastructure consolidation shaped the origins of American antitrust law. From clipper ships to checkerboard land grants, this chapter demonstrates that antitrust enforcement follows infrastructure, not innovation. Dominant systems are displaced not by morality, but by larger systems. Unfortunately, infrastructure expansion has always involved coercion as well as growth.
Together, these three chapters form a work of historical nonfiction examining moments when large technological and infrastructure systems failed, consolidated, or provoked institutional response. This volume does not advance a unified argument or policy position, but invites you to view modern platforms through the lens of earlier systems: become, as the Department of Justice suggests, a student of history.
Author
About the Author
Edward W. Barnard
No Time to Be Beginners
What was it like to stand in the breach, with nobody else to take the decisions, and do-overs are too late? Margaret Hamilton, the first programmer hired for the Apollo project at MIT, explained:
Because software was a mystery, a black box, upper management gave us total freedom and trust. We had to find a way and we did. Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers; no time to be beginners.
During the Cold War when it was "nobody but us," our decisions and solutions were shaped by constraints. At Cray Research constraints and barriers pointed us to the best point of leverage. To remain the best in the world, we had no other option. But before considering leverage, we carefully identified and proved relevant capabilities. Those capabilities showed us what solutions might be plausible. We also found that if it wasn't fun, it probably was not worth doing.
This forced way of working, where responsibility could not be abstracted away, has been mostly lost to time.
My Role as Custodian of Lost Skills
I am bringing you those skills because they were never passed to the next generation. I created a primary source document showing what it was like: Nobody but Us: A History of Cray Research's Software and the Building of the World's Fastest Supercomputer. But I wrote a second primary source, reproducing the Cray Research skills for you right now, in 2026. The Wizard's Lens: Learn to Think Like AI is an apprenticeship drawing you in to experience, not merely read about, how we continuously "achieved the impossible" at Cray Research.
Those Cray Research skills did not begin with software, or even hardware. They began outdoors. Experiential education, with real risks and real consequences, has also been abstracted away. That is where judgement is formed. For this I wrote Surviving Spring Break on the Mountain: The Power of Experiential Education.
Pure Entertainment
If it isn't fun, it probably isn't worth doing. I continued practicing the most important debugging skill I know: spotting patterns and connections that others miss. I wrote Unexpected Histories to show you shifted perspectives, purely for entertainment, but showing real history that matters today. In each case, once you see it, you cannot "un-see" it.
Episode 317
An Interview with Edward W. Barnard
Contents
Table of Contents
Get the free sample chapters
Click the buttons to get the free sample in PDF or EPUB, or read the sample online here
The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
Now, this is technically risky for us, since you'll have the book or course files either way. But we're so confident in our products and services, and in our authors and readers, that we're happy to offer a full money back guarantee for everything we sell.
You can only find out how good something is by trying it, and because of our 100% money back guarantee there's literally no risk to do so!
So, there's no reason not to click the Add to Cart button, is there?
See full terms...
Earn $8 on a $10 Purchase, and $16 on a $20 Purchase
We pay 80% royalties on purchases of $7.99 or more, and 80% royalties minus a 50 cent flat fee on purchases between $0.99 and $7.98. You earn $8 on a $10 sale, and $16 on a $20 sale. So, if we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book for $20, you'll earn $80,000.
(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)
In fact, authors have earned over $14 million writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Write and Publish on Leanpub
You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses!
Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.
Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. (Or, if you are producing your ebook your own way, you can even upload your own PDF and/or EPUB files and then publish with one click!) It really is that easy.