The Internet For Dummies, 14th Edition

About the Authors

John R. Levine was a member of a computer club in high school — before high school students, or even high schools, had computers — where he met Theodor H. Nelson, the author of Computer Lib/Dream Machines and the inventor of hypertext, who reminded us that computers should not be taken seriously and that everyone can and should understand and use computers.

John wrote his first program in 1967 on an IBM 1130 (a computer somewhat less powerful than your typical modern digital wristwatch, only more difficult to use). He became an official system administrator of a networked computer at Yale in 1975. He began working part-time — for a computer company, of course — in 1977 and has been in and out of the computer and network biz ever since. He got his company on Usenet (the Internet’s worldwide bulletin board system) early enough that it appears in a 1982 Byte magazine article on a map of Usenet, which then was so small that the map fit on half a page.

Although John used to spend most of his time writing software, now he mostly writes books (including UNIX For Dummies and technical books such as Linkers and Loaders and qmail) because it’s more fun and he can do so at home in the tiny village of Trumansburg, New York, where in his spare time he was the mayor for several years and can hang around with his daughter when he’s supposed to be writing. John also does a fair amount of public speaking. (Go to www.johnlevine.com to see where he’ll be.) He holds a BA degree ...