Shane Greenstein has closely studied the Internet since it began, getting a firsthand look at its transformation from an idea to a mainstream creation.

“I saw what was happening — we all did,” Greenstein said, before looking around at the audience and quickly backtracking. “I’m not judging your age, but I can tell some of you didn’t.”

Greenstein, a Harvard Business School professor, took his personal look at the Internet and turned it into a book, “How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization, and the Birth of a New Network,” which was recently published by Princeton University Press.

The professor spoke on his book at Syracuse University in Hinds Hall’s Katzer Room on Monday afternoon. During his lecture, Greenstein covered how the Internet started as an open network and quickly became privatized.

After an introduction from Lee McKnight, an associate professor in SU’s School of Information Studies, Greenstein went on to sum up what he called the historical question he tackled in his book: why did the commercialization of the Internet have such a transformative economic impact?

From the beginning, the Internet was something to study, Greenstein said.

“I think it’s conservative to say it changed the way we live and shop and play,” he said.

But looking at this broad creation, many wonder, he said, if there is one person who turned the Internet from an open source project to something commercialized.

“People ask who orchestrated the Internet or if there was an orchestrated statement,” Greenstein said.

He said many people think there was a sort of Thomas Edison or Manhattan Project behind the commercialization of the Internet. But if there’s one thing anyone should take from his talk, Greenstein said it’s that this just isn’t true. Though describing it as “cheesy,” he marked the Manhattan Project and Edison with big red X’s in his lecture slides to stress his point.

There wasn’t one, or even five firms that contributed to Internet commercialization, he said. There were thousands.

Outsiders in the technology world were looking to become insiders — and make some money in the process, Greenstein said. Even many people with just a small business entered the world of providing Internet service to consumers, adding an extra $20,000 to their pockets every year, he said.

Soon, strong outsider firms figured out how to break from the mob. In November 1994, Netscape created a revolutionary web browser, and by the following June, Bill Gates quickly tried to buy it out, Greenstein said.

But Greenstein said these outsiders aren’t created by luck. Open governance and modular technologies, meaning no limit on who can use and see things on the Internet, made this all possible, he said.

“Look at those entrepreneurs — they were nobody,” Greenstein said. “They were just a few guys with an idea.”

As they could easily work on new technologies from their garages instead of high-tech firms, all these creators collectively built a network no one would expect. Greenstein called this process “innovation from the edges,” or people coming from the outside to collaborate on one massive project — in this case, the Internet.

After Greenstein’s talk, the program moved to an open question and answer session. Attendees discussed trends and topics regarding the Internet, with a strong focus on social media and the outsider that was Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook.

“I enjoyed his input and his look at the industry,” said Ian MacInnes, an assosicate professor in the iSchool who has followed Greenstein’s work since the 1990s. “He’s a really good person to have talking about the history of the Internet.

Published on February 15, 2016 at 9:48 pm

Contact Kathryn: kjkrawcz@syr.edu | @kathrynkrawczyk