New Books in History Angus Burgin on the Rise of the Internet
May 11, 2026
Angus Burgin, Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins, traces the intellectual history of the Internet and 1990s politics. He recalls early online life, discusses techno-optimism versus hardware limits, and examines Al Gore's tech rhetoric. The conversation contrasts libertarian and communal visions of the web and considers how 1990s hopes unraveled into later critique.
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College Email Moment and The Mini Fridge Laptop
- Angus Burgin first encountered the internet via Prodigy and dial-up at home, then experienced full email adoption when he arrived at Harvard in 1998.
- He recalls a Dell laptop that overheated so often he cooled it in a mini-fridge, showing early tech limits beneath 90s optimism.
Cyberpunk and Left Academics Tried To Reclaim Politics Online
- Cyberpunk authors and left-leaning academics envisioned virtual worlds as spaces to build affirmative politics despite postmodern anti-foundationalism.
- Burgin links those cultural texts to attempts to overcome 80s-era theoretical paralysis with techno-utopian solutions.
Gore's Distributed Intelligence Vision
- Al Gore represented a 1990s political optimism that tied distributed computing to stronger democracy, education, and economic growth.
- Gore promoted fiber backbone investments as public goods that would produce feedback loops improving citizenship and markets.