Totally Wired, Andrew Smith
Totally Wired, Andrew Smith
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Totally Wired
The Rise and Fall of Josh Harris and The Great Dotcom Swindle

Author: Andrew Smith

Narrator: Adam Lofbomm

Unabridged: 11 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/04/2019


Synopsis

Josh Harris had been New York's first net millionaire. 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. 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, and 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.

About Andrew Smith

Andrew Smith is the award-winning author of several novels, including the critically acclaimed Grasshopper Jungle, Winger, Ghost Medicine. He is a native-born Californian who spent most of his formative years traveling the world. His university studies focused on Political Science, Journalism, and Literature. He has published numerous short stories and articles. Andrew lives in Southern California.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Blair on 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......more

Goodreads review by Catherine on December 09, 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. An......more

Goodreads review by Caroline on October 05, 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 interne......more

Goodreads review by Paul on October 09, 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

Goodreads review by Francis on December 05, 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.......more