LOAD: A story of the Internet | The Internet as you have never read

On November 22, 2026, a thermonuclear attack on major cities decimated humanity and destroyed all communication networks. In this postapocalyptic world, in 2040, in Blanc-Sablon in Quebec, the elders of the Vincent family tell the youngest this formidable tool that was the Internet.

Posted at 9:15 a.m.

This is how Carl Bessette poses the basis of his ambitious project: telling the story of the Internet in an abundant romantic essay in four volumes, the first of which has just been published by hands -free editions, LOAD: A history of the Internet – The Giants. To have imagined a planetary catastrophe allowed him to contain in time his subject, with a beginning, an environment and an end to the Internet, in addition to avoiding him to write volumes endlessly.

“But at the base, I wanted to locate my story in a world where the Internet no longer exists so that, when the book is closed, we can say to ourselves: we still have it,” he explains. So we have to take care of it. I realize at the moment that it is necessary to be worthy of it too. My book is really a love letter to the Internet. »»

Anyone who has read his sympathetic try All detailsin which he tells his compulsive obsessive features, will guess that Carl Bessette has a manic concern for the facts and that the trip in his internet history will be very instructive and solidly documented. But also very lively and accessible; Load is both a fiction and a history manual, which is full of anecdotes and whose bibliography is impressive. One of his writing models, which I like a lot, is Bill Bryson, the author ofA story of everything, or almost …, Small popularization masterpiece that everyone should read, according to him.

So in LoadCarl Bessette dates back to a kind of prehistoricity of the Internet by recalling inventions that have opened the way, such as Pascaline, the arithmetic machine of Blaise Pascal, the Basil Basin Basil loom, the Charles Baggage difference machine, the telegraph, the telephone and electricity, to the differential analyzer of Vannevar Bush, the Machine Colossus or the Electronic Numeric. Integrator and Computer (ENIAC).

To be honest, it is an exciting epic, which demonstrates that human genius is a relay race in a combination of knowledge, and not an individual affair. And we are told all that by the fireside, in the company of the Vincent family!

Carl Bessette and I share an intense fascination for the gigantic upheaval brought by the Internet, probably because we belong to the generation that saw him born. A bit like our great-grandparents had to feel when they told the arrival of electricity. He still remembers this impression of magic when he understood that his first web page could be consulted worldwide.

We also remember Napster, which was a great moment for the budding Internet users that we were. “It is very hard for young people who were born with that to understand our excitement. Napster, no one would do it anymore today, it would be far too dangerous. It was literally a program that said “I give you access to everything I have in music on my computer in exchange for your music on yours”. It was an extraordinary level of freedom and naivety and no one thought of putting a virus! »»

Bessette believes that the Internet is a invention as revolutionary as writing, but which has taken place in a very short time and whose measure has not yet been evaluated.

A great reader of history books, he likes to make comparisons between contemporary authors of events and those who write decades later on the same subjects. This means that being a contemporary of the arrival of the Internet, he saw as a duty to testify to the world before for future generations. He even believes that it is everyone’s duty.

“Because, obviously, there is no one who will know what a world is without this connectivity. No one can do it anymore. Anyone with a talent in an artistic discipline whatever it is a duty to testify to that, to do at least one room, a piece, a painting … If Chopin or Shakespeare existed today, it is sure that they would have addressed it in their works. »»

A graduate in philosophy and applied computer science, co -founder of the legendary publishing house of the L’Aigré, Carl Bessette has devoted more than ten years of his life to this history of the Internet which will culminate in the last volume with the arrival of artificial intelligence. But he warns me that it is a story that will deteriorate, like the disturbing and gourmet monopolies that Gafam has become.

After spending time with great minds like Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing or Claude Shannon, he can only see the smallness of characters like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg compared to the power they have.

Moreover, Carl Bessette withdrew from social networks, because he finds that they have become dangerous, and that he does not like their current leaders. “It takes a form of empathy to be able to manage these tools. These are big responsibilities, which also go with us, users. It is a powerful tool, we must know how to use it. It deserves, this power. With a hammer, you can build a house or smash a skull. Are we worthy of the hammer? »»

On the other hand, Carl Bessette is one of those rare optimists who have faith in humanity, and it is convinced that the Internet will be used to mobilize in the face of the serious dangers that threaten us, the climate crisis first. “I think it will exist, even better tools. You have to trust humanity. We are not tatas enough to continue using something as boboche and badly done as Facebook! »»

LOAD: an internet story, volume 1 – The giants

Carl Bessette

Handsome

485 pages