What do you think?
Rate this book
Totally Wired: The Rise and Fall of Josh Harris and The Great Dotcom Swindle
From award-winning journalist Andrew Smith, the never before told story of the late 1990s dot-com bubble, its tumultuous crash, and the rise and fall of the visionary pioneer at its epicenter.
One morning in February 2001, internet entrepreneur Josh Harris woke to certain knowledge that he was about to lose everything. The man Time magazine called "The Warhol of the Web" was now reduced to the role of helpless spectator as his personal fortune dwindled from 85 million dollars, to 50 million, to nothing, all in the space of a week.
Harris had been New York's first net millionaire, a maverick genius so preternaturally adapted to the fluid virtualities of the new online world that he saw it with a clarity almost no one else did. He founded the city's first dotcom, Pseudo.com, and paved the way for a cadre of net-savvy twentysomethings to follow, riding a wave of tech euphoria to unimagined wealth and fame for five years, before losing it all in the great dotcom crash of 2000, in which Web 1.0 was wiped from the face of the earth. Long before then, however, Harris's view of where the web would take us had darkened, and he began a series of lurid social experiments aimed at illustrating his worst fear: that the internet would soon alter the very fabric of society--cognitive, social, political, and otherwise.
In Totally Wired, award-winning author and journalist Andrew Smith seeks to unravel the opaque and mysterious episodes of the twentieth century dotcom craze, in which the seeds of our current reality were sown. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Harris and the former pioneers who worked alongside him in downtown Manhattan's "Silicon Alley," the narrative moves from a compound in the wild south of Ethiopia, through New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, London and Salt Lake City, Utah; from the dawn of the web to the present, taking in the rise of retro-truth, troll society, the unexpected origins of the net itself, as our world has grown uncannily to resemble the one Harris predicted--and had urged us to evade.
One morning in February 2001, internet entrepreneur Josh Harris woke to certain knowledge that he was about to lose everything. The man Time magazine called "The Warhol of the Web" was now reduced to the role of helpless spectator as his personal fortune dwindled from 85 million dollars, to 50 million, to nothing, all in the space of a week.
Harris had been New York's first net millionaire, a maverick genius so preternaturally adapted to the fluid virtualities of the new online world that he saw it with a clarity almost no one else did. He founded the city's first dotcom, Pseudo.com, and paved the way for a cadre of net-savvy twentysomethings to follow, riding a wave of tech euphoria to unimagined wealth and fame for five years, before losing it all in the great dotcom crash of 2000, in which Web 1.0 was wiped from the face of the earth. Long before then, however, Harris's view of where the web would take us had darkened, and he began a series of lurid social experiments aimed at illustrating his worst fear: that the internet would soon alter the very fabric of society--cognitive, social, political, and otherwise.
In Totally Wired, award-winning author and journalist Andrew Smith seeks to unravel the opaque and mysterious episodes of the twentieth century dotcom craze, in which the seeds of our current reality were sown. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Harris and the former pioneers who worked alongside him in downtown Manhattan's "Silicon Alley," the narrative moves from a compound in the wild south of Ethiopia, through New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, London and Salt Lake City, Utah; from the dawn of the web to the present, taking in the rise of retro-truth, troll society, the unexpected origins of the net itself, as our world has grown uncannily to resemble the one Harris predicted--and had urged us to evade.
412 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2012
14 people are currently reading
1090 people want to read
About the author
Andrew Smith
4 books79 followersI was born in New York, but have lived most of my life in the UK and started out as a journalist, just writing and writing at Melody Maker, then The Face, Sunday Times and Observer. The engine of my work is always curiosity: my first book, 'Moondust', stemmed from me wondering what had happened to the 12 men who walked on the Moon between 1969 and '72; my second from bewilderment at the way Web 1.0, the wild first phase of the internet, imploded and vanished so mysteriously in 2000.
These days I also make the odd documentary film, most notably 'Being Neil Armstrong' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird at 50' for BBC4. I'm currently part way into a novel (based on copious research about real events) and into adapting 'Totally Wired' for TV.
These days I also make the odd documentary film, most notably 'Being Neil Armstrong' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird at 50' for BBC4. I'm currently part way into a novel (based on copious research about real events) and into adapting 'Totally Wired' for TV.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
November 20, 2018
Josh Harris was a 90s internet entrepreneur who founded the influential early streaming site Pseudo, briefly enjoyed spectacular success and an extravagant lifestyle, then went bankrupt when the bubble burst. At the beginning of the book, written in 2008, Smith finds him living in a meagre house in Awassa, Ethiopia. From here, Smith goes back to the beginning – the very beginning: he summarises the invention of the ARPANET, then the internet, and the later introduction of the World Wide Web and browsers; the state of US economics in the 1980s; and Giuliani's reign as mayor of NYC, all to set the scene.
Nominally, this book is about 'The Wild Rise and Crazy Fall of the First Dotcom Dream', but it could just as easily be framed as a biography of Harris. I'd read about him before – he pops up in Olivia Laing's The Lonely City, with specific reference to his early experiments in webcasting and the 'We Live in Public' art project – but this is a truly in-depth study. Smith is fascinated by Harris, and frequently changes his mind about whether the man really believes his own stories. Is he insane, a visionary, or just a prankster? Harris claims his ex-partner was actually hired to play his girlfriend; later, he implies Pseudo itself was a kind of performance art. There are repeated references to 'Launder My Head', an animation Harris made in 1993 and which several interviewees (including the man himself) suggest is somehow real to him.
Totally Wired is interesting, but also exhausting. Both in content and execution. Many of the main players come off as total dicks, 'Silicon Alley' is very obviously a rich-white-male-dominated environment, and all the supposedly wild parties sound dreadful, full of people trying way too hard to be quirky and outrageous. No matter how much Smith insists the New York dotcom scene of the 90s was where everyone wanted to be, I couldn't envision it as anything other than tawdry and vapid. The writing is dense: Smith is seemingly intent on including every tiny detail along with rapid-fire, hard-to-follow explanations of financial concepts. Sentences often run to 15 or 20 lines. Sometimes he switches to a jarringly informal tone, peppered with dated slang ('natch') and smug namedropping, throwing ellipses and italics around randomly. Thinking about it, this is probably reflective of the way his subjects talk/write.
While Smith provides a comprehensive breakdown of what led to the dotcom bubble and what became of those involved, the book also sees him essentially chasing a series of myths about and/or created by Harris; trying to create a definitive account of someone who continually, compulsively fictionalises himself. The effect is disorientating, labyrinthine. I can't say I really understood Smith's obsession with Harris, or felt that anything he had to say was any more stunningly prescient than any number of predictions made by those who recognised the internet's potential at an early stage. (Not to say his work wasn't ahead of its time, but he's hardly unique in that, and the glut of failed ventures in his more recent career suggest he's someone who was in the right place at the right time and got lucky, rather than a genius.)
The author was, unfortunately, unable to persuade this reader to share his fascination with his primary subject. (Many tangentially mentioned figures and projects seemed more intriguing to me, and I often paused to google a person, company or article.) For the first half, I would have said the book was worth reading in spite of that, but the second half became a struggle; I had to make myself sit down and read it, like it was homework. There is a good and important story here – buried beneath heaps of unnecessary minutiae.
I received an advance review copy of Totally Wired, revised for the US publication of the book in 2019, from the publisher through Edelweiss.
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
Nominally, this book is about 'The Wild Rise and Crazy Fall of the First Dotcom Dream', but it could just as easily be framed as a biography of Harris. I'd read about him before – he pops up in Olivia Laing's The Lonely City, with specific reference to his early experiments in webcasting and the 'We Live in Public' art project – but this is a truly in-depth study. Smith is fascinated by Harris, and frequently changes his mind about whether the man really believes his own stories. Is he insane, a visionary, or just a prankster? Harris claims his ex-partner was actually hired to play his girlfriend; later, he implies Pseudo itself was a kind of performance art. There are repeated references to 'Launder My Head', an animation Harris made in 1993 and which several interviewees (including the man himself) suggest is somehow real to him.
Totally Wired is interesting, but also exhausting. Both in content and execution. Many of the main players come off as total dicks, 'Silicon Alley' is very obviously a rich-white-male-dominated environment, and all the supposedly wild parties sound dreadful, full of people trying way too hard to be quirky and outrageous. No matter how much Smith insists the New York dotcom scene of the 90s was where everyone wanted to be, I couldn't envision it as anything other than tawdry and vapid. The writing is dense: Smith is seemingly intent on including every tiny detail along with rapid-fire, hard-to-follow explanations of financial concepts. Sentences often run to 15 or 20 lines. Sometimes he switches to a jarringly informal tone, peppered with dated slang ('natch') and smug namedropping, throwing ellipses and italics around randomly. Thinking about it, this is probably reflective of the way his subjects talk/write.
While Smith provides a comprehensive breakdown of what led to the dotcom bubble and what became of those involved, the book also sees him essentially chasing a series of myths about and/or created by Harris; trying to create a definitive account of someone who continually, compulsively fictionalises himself. The effect is disorientating, labyrinthine. I can't say I really understood Smith's obsession with Harris, or felt that anything he had to say was any more stunningly prescient than any number of predictions made by those who recognised the internet's potential at an early stage. (Not to say his work wasn't ahead of its time, but he's hardly unique in that, and the glut of failed ventures in his more recent career suggest he's someone who was in the right place at the right time and got lucky, rather than a genius.)
The author was, unfortunately, unable to persuade this reader to share his fascination with his primary subject. (Many tangentially mentioned figures and projects seemed more intriguing to me, and I often paused to google a person, company or article.) For the first half, I would have said the book was worth reading in spite of that, but the second half became a struggle; I had to make myself sit down and read it, like it was homework. There is a good and important story here – buried beneath heaps of unnecessary minutiae.
I received an advance review copy of Totally Wired, revised for the US publication of the book in 2019, from the publisher through Edelweiss.
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
December 9, 2012
(3.5 stars)
I'm not quite sure *what* I thought about this book, Goodreads...
A bit of background: MOONDUST, Smith's first book about what the surviving Apollo moonwalkers are up to now (or were up to then), is one of my favorite books ever. It's probably in my Top 5 non-fiction reads of all time. And the origins of the internet and the dotcom boom and bust are a subject that fascinates me, and it's a subject about which I've read—and enjoyed—many other books. So I was primed to love this book, and I'm quite disappointed that I didn't, and a bit confused as to why not.
I think the subtitle is a tad misleading, "On the trial of the great dotcom swindle." Because this book isn't really about the internet bubble bursting. That's the color in it, the little anecdotes, the amusing sidenotes. What it's really about is Josh Harris, founder of video streaming site Pseudo and general merchant of inexplicable crazy, a figure who Smith evidently finds fascinating, a visionary and worthy of endless study and examination. The problem is that I don't think Smith convinced ME that Harris is all that. (Amusingly, he mentions in the book that he had trouble convincing his publishers of that too.) And so instead of enjoying this book—the story of Josh and Smith's attempt to measure Josh's role in internet history—I found myself mainly annoyed about Josh getting in the way of Smith's telling of the REALLY interesting story, the more interesting one: that of the dotcom bubble and its subsequently, spectacular bursting. A chapter in which Smith travels to Ethiopia to ask Josh questions about himself was particularly grating for me, especially when it came so early in the book that the reader hadn't yet been given a single reason to be interested in Josh, let alone a chance to decide if that reason was reason enough.
Josh Harris just isn't all that. He should've been a chapter in this book, not its reason for being. But I did enjoy Smith's writing, and what there was of the real story behind the dotcom swindle, was fascinating.
I'm not quite sure *what* I thought about this book, Goodreads...
A bit of background: MOONDUST, Smith's first book about what the surviving Apollo moonwalkers are up to now (or were up to then), is one of my favorite books ever. It's probably in my Top 5 non-fiction reads of all time. And the origins of the internet and the dotcom boom and bust are a subject that fascinates me, and it's a subject about which I've read—and enjoyed—many other books. So I was primed to love this book, and I'm quite disappointed that I didn't, and a bit confused as to why not.
I think the subtitle is a tad misleading, "On the trial of the great dotcom swindle." Because this book isn't really about the internet bubble bursting. That's the color in it, the little anecdotes, the amusing sidenotes. What it's really about is Josh Harris, founder of video streaming site Pseudo and general merchant of inexplicable crazy, a figure who Smith evidently finds fascinating, a visionary and worthy of endless study and examination. The problem is that I don't think Smith convinced ME that Harris is all that. (Amusingly, he mentions in the book that he had trouble convincing his publishers of that too.) And so instead of enjoying this book—the story of Josh and Smith's attempt to measure Josh's role in internet history—I found myself mainly annoyed about Josh getting in the way of Smith's telling of the REALLY interesting story, the more interesting one: that of the dotcom bubble and its subsequently, spectacular bursting. A chapter in which Smith travels to Ethiopia to ask Josh questions about himself was particularly grating for me, especially when it came so early in the book that the reader hadn't yet been given a single reason to be interested in Josh, let alone a chance to decide if that reason was reason enough.
Josh Harris just isn't all that. He should've been a chapter in this book, not its reason for being. But I did enjoy Smith's writing, and what there was of the real story behind the dotcom swindle, was fascinating.
October 5, 2012
It's hard to recall when vast swathes of information and opinion (and LOLcats) weren't instantly accessible through the web, when you had to actually step outside to get the groceries, and "content" wasn't earnestly, endlessly discussed at every other meeting. Yet the incredible reach of the internet is a recent phenomenon, and one that has changed our world.
This book looks at the start of this phenomenon, and focuses on Josh Harris, one of the earliest internet pioneers, a brilliant but difficult man way ahead of his time. Just by itself, this is an intriguing exploration of a fascinating character, and a spell-binding tale of the birth of the web. But then there's also a chilling expose of how the financial market can make instant billionaires out of college kids - and render them bankrupt just a short time later.
I think this is a really important book, given the current economic crisis and the ruthless, if not immoral, practices which contributed to it. And it's not in any way a dry read - it's endlessly fascinating, beautifully written and captures the essence of one of the most exciting periods in history. I loved it.
This book looks at the start of this phenomenon, and focuses on Josh Harris, one of the earliest internet pioneers, a brilliant but difficult man way ahead of his time. Just by itself, this is an intriguing exploration of a fascinating character, and a spell-binding tale of the birth of the web. But then there's also a chilling expose of how the financial market can make instant billionaires out of college kids - and render them bankrupt just a short time later.
I think this is a really important book, given the current economic crisis and the ruthless, if not immoral, practices which contributed to it. And it's not in any way a dry read - it's endlessly fascinating, beautifully written and captures the essence of one of the most exciting periods in history. I loved it.
October 9, 2012
Whatever your knowledge of or interest in the early on-line world and the press coverage that highlighted the huge financial gains and losses that the early pioneers enjoyed and suffered, read this book. My perception of those times was primitive; I had no idea of the creativity that existed (albeit more than a little weird), the pretty seedy material that was peddled on line and the lifestyles off line; how many people were involved, and just how close what they were doing 15 years ago came to be what we all accept and take part in now.
This beautifully crafted book leads you through the creative, financial and personal stories which when told in parallel make a fascinating read. Andrew Smith makes a complex story very understandable and having met a large number of the pioneers he gets into the psyche of those involved.
Perhaps of all the aspects that the book covers, it is how far ahead of his time Josh Harris, the main character, was with his online vision and creations that has intrigued me most. So many elements of his creative mind helped form a huge part of everyday life as we now know it. With us having come to live so closely to how he envisaged over a decade ago, reading his latest beliefs of where we are heading will keep you thinking long after you close the covers on this book.
If you want to understand where we are, and why, in the wired and wireless world, then buy this book.
This beautifully crafted book leads you through the creative, financial and personal stories which when told in parallel make a fascinating read. Andrew Smith makes a complex story very understandable and having met a large number of the pioneers he gets into the psyche of those involved.
Perhaps of all the aspects that the book covers, it is how far ahead of his time Josh Harris, the main character, was with his online vision and creations that has intrigued me most. So many elements of his creative mind helped form a huge part of everyday life as we now know it. With us having come to live so closely to how he envisaged over a decade ago, reading his latest beliefs of where we are heading will keep you thinking long after you close the covers on this book.
If you want to understand where we are, and why, in the wired and wireless world, then buy this book.
August 25, 2025
I hadn't heard much about Josh Harris, since most of his notoriety in New York City and Silicon Alley, specifically, came after I had left the city for good in 1997. This book, Totally Wired, is, at times chaotic as Harris' lifestyle jumping as it does between the past and the present and between the specifics of what was going on with Harris' businesses and with Silicon Alley in general. All of which was interesting, but I don't think the average reader would be as fascinated with Harris as the author seems to be.
September 24, 2019
Thought this would be a good companion to the book on the KLF that did a good job of dealing with some of the strangeness of the 90s but struggled to care about the main focus. Enjoyed the dot con history
December 5, 2019
gave up part way in. well written but not a subject that held my interest at all. I don't read the blurb so thought this way about the business of Web 1.0 rather than one very unusual personality in that world.
November 16, 2013
I ran hot and cold with this book. When the author adopts a journalistic style and recounts, say, the rise of the Internet or the bursting of the dot com bubble, it is excellent. (If I ever want a quick summary of the evolution of the Internet, I will read chapter five.) However, when he veers into near hagiography and idolisation of his main subject, Josh Harris, the book becomes both wearying and irritating. Do you know who Josh Harris is, and will you want to know more about him after reading this? For me, it was a NO on both counts. (Rather than recount who he is in this review, I suggest you look up Wikipedia and then, if intrigued, buy this book.) After a while, the author's near obsession with Harris begins to read like some love sick teenager's diary of an unrequited love. It becomes borderline pathetic, and I found myself skipping pages of near idolatrous drivel to find some of the more factual narratives on the evolution of the net which are undeniably a good read. I felt that there's a really good book here about the rise of the Internet and the first dot com crash that was struggling to get out.
I have read a few of these books about the early days of the internet, and I feel that in doing so I am witnessing history being written, rewritten, revised and shaped. Who did it? Who built the thing? Was it the Pentagon? Was it American Ivy League Universities? Was it Tim Berners Lee (all of the world outside Britain suddenly asks "Who?") Trying to point at an individual who made the biggest impact on the web is like trying to figure out which fibre in a coiled rope is the one dictating the shape and strength of the rope itself. Technologies converge. For just about any invention you can think of that is laid at the feet of one guy, there were about a hundred people just behind them, and one or two maybe even in front. Maybe Josh Harris is one of the seminal visionaries of what the Web is becoming. But I wasn't convinced.
I have read a few of these books about the early days of the internet, and I feel that in doing so I am witnessing history being written, rewritten, revised and shaped. Who did it? Who built the thing? Was it the Pentagon? Was it American Ivy League Universities? Was it Tim Berners Lee (all of the world outside Britain suddenly asks "Who?") Trying to point at an individual who made the biggest impact on the web is like trying to figure out which fibre in a coiled rope is the one dictating the shape and strength of the rope itself. Technologies converge. For just about any invention you can think of that is laid at the feet of one guy, there were about a hundred people just behind them, and one or two maybe even in front. Maybe Josh Harris is one of the seminal visionaries of what the Web is becoming. But I wasn't convinced.
October 1, 2012
Moondust is one of my favourite reads of all time, so when I heard there was a new book out by Andrew Smith I bought it - and it’s just so nice to be in the company of this author again.
Without giving too much of the game away, Smith takes us on a journey that starts in London, then swerves abruptly to Ethiopia, then on to New York, then off to Utah… anywhere that he can find JOSH.
It’s a wild ride as he tries to track down one of the strangest characters our modern world has created.
Like I say, I don’t want to give too much of the game away… but the person he’s after is Josh Harris. An oddball, possibly autistic, geekus who ruled the party-scene of nineties New York, much as Warhol had a generation earlier. His early experiments in ‘living in public’ (his term) prefigure Big Brother, Twitter and any other ‘social media’ invasion you can think of.
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of this guy. But more than that, I couldn’t believe that I had forgotten a time when this didn’t exist. For the first time in years I stopped and thought about the first time I had used the internet and when that was. I suddenly realized how much the world has changed.
‘May you live in interesting times’.
The gift of this book is to remind us that we do. Smith charts the history of the dotcom boom-bust-reboom and offers us a space to think about its implications
I wouldn’t say that at the end of the book I had answers to these questions. But I had, at least, started to think about it – and when you do think about it, it is amazing.
You may not be of a like-mind to me, but if you are, in chapter 20 you will find out something about (*)ankers shenanigans - and how they financed the dotcom ‘bust’ - that throws yet more perspective on the times in which we live.
(*)astards.
Without giving too much of the game away, Smith takes us on a journey that starts in London, then swerves abruptly to Ethiopia, then on to New York, then off to Utah… anywhere that he can find JOSH.
It’s a wild ride as he tries to track down one of the strangest characters our modern world has created.
Like I say, I don’t want to give too much of the game away… but the person he’s after is Josh Harris. An oddball, possibly autistic, geekus who ruled the party-scene of nineties New York, much as Warhol had a generation earlier. His early experiments in ‘living in public’ (his term) prefigure Big Brother, Twitter and any other ‘social media’ invasion you can think of.
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of this guy. But more than that, I couldn’t believe that I had forgotten a time when this didn’t exist. For the first time in years I stopped and thought about the first time I had used the internet and when that was. I suddenly realized how much the world has changed.
‘May you live in interesting times’.
The gift of this book is to remind us that we do. Smith charts the history of the dotcom boom-bust-reboom and offers us a space to think about its implications
I wouldn’t say that at the end of the book I had answers to these questions. But I had, at least, started to think about it – and when you do think about it, it is amazing.
You may not be of a like-mind to me, but if you are, in chapter 20 you will find out something about (*)ankers shenanigans - and how they financed the dotcom ‘bust’ - that throws yet more perspective on the times in which we live.
(*)astards.
February 9, 2013
Every generation or so a revolution happens which changes everything. This book is a fascinating account of one of those times. Between the late nineties and early noughties, a generation of highly creative and technologically gifted twenty- somethings got hold of the potential of the Internet and set off the collective madness of the dot com bubble. With the benefit of hindsight this book chronicles the chaos and madness of those years through the perspective of Josh Harris, one of its pioneers. It portrays a world with no boundaries and apparently limitless reserves of energy and creativity bordering on insanity, not only among the creatives but also the bankers and finance houses that funded these indisciplined and commercially naive enterprises.
The writing is pacy and fluent and the material is rich source of near contemporaneous evidence for all future historians, theologians, philosophers, psychologists and sociologists reflecting on the way information and technology changed society and identity in the early 21st century. Thank you Good Reads for the best giveaway yet.
The writing is pacy and fluent and the material is rich source of near contemporaneous evidence for all future historians, theologians, philosophers, psychologists and sociologists reflecting on the way information and technology changed society and identity in the early 21st century. Thank you Good Reads for the best giveaway yet.
September 23, 2012
This is an interesting book and i could have given it anything from a 2star to 4 star rating. The reason is the subject matter is almost glacial, like a modern building its almost all surface and no heart and so any book about that will struggle to find sympathy or empathy for such a subject.
It feels almost sci-fi in that its a world that seems alien and indeed wrong and unimaginable and the story charts this world, which as i have no real frame of reference due to my living in West Yorkshire rather than NY and having no connection with high finance or IT, is magnified.
The author is almost the subject his struggle to comprehend his subject and his continuing change of feelings about the subject are interesting, the writing is almost breathless and as page turning as any airport paperback.
It is a good read , almost essential in understanding that you cannot understand the motivations of the market place and the sheer madness of a bubble market.
It feels almost sci-fi in that its a world that seems alien and indeed wrong and unimaginable and the story charts this world, which as i have no real frame of reference due to my living in West Yorkshire rather than NY and having no connection with high finance or IT, is magnified.
The author is almost the subject his struggle to comprehend his subject and his continuing change of feelings about the subject are interesting, the writing is almost breathless and as page turning as any airport paperback.
It is a good read , almost essential in understanding that you cannot understand the motivations of the market place and the sheer madness of a bubble market.
October 5, 2012
Being a part of this era and living it fully, I was excited to get Totally Wired (again). I bought the kindle but needed the hardcover and have spent days on end reading in cafe settings, on the subway, on my roof, late in my bed and this book has taken me back to the roaring Silicon Nineties! It goes beyond the names and places of the time in NYC and delves deeply into the fabric of the financial situation during the dotcom boom... able to mix the parties we had, the art we made, the money we scored, the budgets we worked and the minds profoundly expanded by the surprise of the internet dawning... Loved it. Buy it!
February 18, 2013
Very well written but the subject matter is not something I would normally choose to read about. Stocks & shares are far over my head but enjoyed the parts about Josh Harris. Also surprised how much the art scene was involved ;)
Andrew Smith's Moondust is a book I absolutely loved and would highly recommend you check that out too!
Andrew Smith's Moondust is a book I absolutely loved and would highly recommend you check that out too!
January 19, 2013
A fascinating, thrilling book about the birth of the internet, and its most intriguing pioneer, Josh Harris. A generation of dot-commers changed the world forever in the 90s, but most of them, Harris included, crashed as hard as the trailblazing companies they founded. Essential reading for the cyber generation.
March 3, 2019
I wanted to like this - I really did. The premise had promise, but I just couldn't make it past about 60 pages in. Instead of a more standard recounting of events, the author presents more of a disorganized summary of his time with Josh. Maybe, given more time, these disparate bits would have coalesced into something concrete, but for me, the struggle to get there wasn't worth the effort.
July 3, 2013
As someone who has been using the internet since 1997 I was fascinated to read this book and it did not disappoint. A well narrated and written account of the background of the internet particularly from the late 90's.
December 31, 2012
A tale that had to be told, and a warning from recent history. Follow-the-herd investments are never what they appear.
to-read-tier-3
March 15, 2019added this to my to read list based on this.
https://www.wired.com/story/josh-harr...
https://www.wired.com/story/josh-harr...
January 11, 2019
Totally Wired was not what I was expecting it to be. I didn't enjoy this book. Definitely not my type of book.
March 21, 2019
An interesting and fascinating book, full of information about a fascinating time.
It's bit boring at the beginning unless you are interested in the character he talks about, then it starts with facts, name and fascinating stories of less known name of the dotcom time.
I liked the style of writing and the book kept my attention till the last page.
Recommended!
Many thanks to Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.
It's bit boring at the beginning unless you are interested in the character he talks about, then it starts with facts, name and fascinating stories of less known name of the dotcom time.
I liked the style of writing and the book kept my attention till the last page.
Recommended!
Many thanks to Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews