KEY POINTS:
The first time I heard the word "hyperlink" was in an enthusiastic rave by IT journalist Keith Newman in the early 1990s, describing some computer network he seemed convinced would change the world.
As a subeditor on IT newsweekly Computerworld, I was used to Newman raving about one
revolutionary IT development or another, so didn't think too much of his latest preoccupation. The subeditor was there to exercise a little scepticism, eliminate about half the words and try to ensure the published story made sense.
Almost 20 years on, Newman's enthusiasm remains in full flight in a 700-page history of the internet in New Zealand, Connecting the Clouds, launched yesterday evening at the National Library in Wellington. Given his early advocacy of the internet as a technology story that should be taken seriously, it's fitting that he should be writing its local history.
The tome was commissioned by InternetNZ, New Zealand's internet governance body, which clearly got more than it bargained for. Newman notes appreciatively at the back that InternetNZ didn't flinch when he sought an expanded brief as the project ballooned from the intended 100,000 words to about 400,000.
The book's heft can be attributed to its being not just an account of the internet in New Zealand, but also of the arrival of the first computers, and the changes the telecommunications market has gone - and continues to go - through.
But the story opens much earlier than that, with a canter through colonial times, describing how phone lines first spread where they were useful in military campaigns against Maori, and the surprising fact that, by February 1876, we were already connected to Australia, and onwards to Britain, by submarine cable.
From there, the first stirrings within the depths of the US military research establishment of something that would become the internet are recounted. Then its spread to universities in America and Britain.
In this country, meanwhile, boffins in government departments and at universities with newly acquired "big iron", or mainframe, computers were discovering for themselves how to network them. That kept them occupied through the 1970s and early 1980s, by which time there were patchy network connections between researchers here and overseas. This part of the book has enough arcane detail of computers and networking protocols to cause even the nerdiest to nod off.
A breakthrough came in 1989, when Waikato University's John Houlker succeeded in establishing a permanent link to the developing US internet through Hawaii, the coup being that it was subsidised by the space agency Nasa, which had research interests here.
Along with Houlker, Connecting the Clouds is peopled by numerous individuals who continue to be intimately involved with the New Zealand internet.
There's Frank March, who got his hands dirty at the DSIR connecting diverse government computers to one another, and is today an ICT adviser in the Ministry of Economic Development.
Another prominent figure is Peter Dengate Thrush, a lawyer, and past president of InternetNZ, who was instrumental in setting up Domainz, the InternetNZ-owned company that manages New Zealand domain names. Today he chairs ICANN, the international internet governance body.
Needless to say, the machinations of both bodies fill many pages, including the fraught period when Domainz was finding its feet, which was the trigger for the country's first online defamation suit. It was brought by Domainz on behalf of CEO Patrick O'Brien, against Alan Brown, of Manawatu Internet Services.
Brown, a member of ISOCNZ (InternetNZ's forerunner), lost. In a touching display of even-handedness, InternetNZ helped to fund both sides of the case.
There are villains, too, in the form of Rod "Dr Death" Deane, the long-timehead of an intransigent privatised Telecom, and his protege Theresa Gattung.
A surprising omission is any mention of David Harris, the Dunedin writer of Pegasus Mail, undoubtedly the most-used New Zealand software in the world, running on millions of PCs. Harris was an important contributor to New Zealand's anti-spam law, passed last year.
There is social history in the book: the slow adaptation of the law to the online age is recorded, and the spin the music industry gets in over song downloads. There's also speculation about what comes next: "... broadband will only magnify our ability to connect, create, collaborate, communicate, compete and show compassion". One day, maybe.
Is it an important book? Certainly insiders will devour the fine detail of trench warfare between fledgling internet service providers and Telecom, while academics will appreciate the vast bibliography and footnotes sections.
For the average web surfer, rich though New Zealand's internet history is, a subedited version of events might suffice: "In the 1990s, the developed world got the world wide web, while New Zealand got deregulated telecommunications, and the world wide wait."
Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland technology journalist
