The first version of this reference won the RUSA Award for Outstanding Reference Source in 2000. Now expanded to three volumes, the new edition includes a fully revised and extended chronology volume, a volume of biographies, and a volume with articles analyzing key Internet issues. The set also offers many fascinating tidbits about the Internet, including the fact that the phrase "surfing the Internet" was coined in 1992 by librarian Jean Armour Polly in an article in the Wilson Library Bulletin.

This set covers the earliest roots of the Internet, from events dating as far back as the 1800s and the invention of the telephone all the way to the founding of news agencies, the first steps toward digital computing, and the development of computing technology, telecommunications, and media. This work will be of interest to students of mass media, gender, business, and social history as well as technology.