Summary of The Third Wave

by Steve Case | Includes Analysis

Instaread Summaries

• Publisher: Instaread, Inc
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781683781394
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Culture sur le lieu de travail

Summary ofThe Third Waveby Steve Case| IncludesAnalysis

Preview:

The Third Wave relates AOL co-founder and former CEO Steve Case’s reflections on his career and the future of the technology industry in America. Part memoir, part analysis of the industry, The Third Wave is also a cautionary tale to would-be entrepreneurs who believe the culture of solo founders and tech disruption will always be valued in the future. The book is named for futurist Alvin Toffler’s 1980 text The Third Wave. In Toffler’s text, all of humanity’s past, present, and future can be divided into three waves.

In Case’s Third Wave, the history of the Internet is likewise broken into three waves. In the First Wave, entrepreneurs such as those at AOL had to build the infrastructure of a consumer-facing Internet from the ground up. These early Internet pioneers had to communicate and partner across industries to ensure that the government…

PLEASE NOTE: This is key takeaways and analysis of the book and NOT the original book.

Inside this InstareadSummary of The Third Wave

·Overview of the Book

·Important People

·Key Takeaways

·Analysis of Key Takeaways

About the Author

With Instaread, you can get the key takeaways, summary and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

 

 

 

Analysis

 

 

Key Takeaway 1

 

The First Wave of the Internet was about building the technology from the ground up and getting people connected.

 

Analysis

In the 1980s and 1990s, the consumer-facing Internet was still being built from scratch. Companies were creating new infrastructure and finding ways to get people connected.

In 1983, only 1.4 percent of Americans had Internet access. [1] In 1984, only 8.2 percent of American households had a personal computer. More than a decade later, in 1995, the number of Americans with Internet access had increased tenfold to 14 percent. By 2000, about half of all Americans had access to a home computer with Internet access. While an Internet connection was becoming increasingly essential to owning a computer, only half of the country was engaging online from their home. [2]

Today, 84 percent of Americans use the Internet—those who remain offline are mostly elderly. [3] In order to achieve this widespread adoption, entrepreneurs in the early days of the Internet had to work with the government to grant civilian access to the network that the government was using for military and research institutions. Then, early companies like AOL had to make sure that people could access the web through a modem or telephone connection. Third Wave entrepreneurs will need to learn from the lessons of these First Wave entrepreneurs because both eras will be characterized by major investment in infrastructure and overcoming barriers to entry in industries not typically penetrated by the Internet.

Key Takeaway 2

The Second Wave of the Internet was about developing and creating the products we use online. Google, Amazon, eBay, social networking, and mobile devices all emerged in this period.

Analysis

Once the groundwork for Internet connectivity was laid in the First Wave, new companies sprang up to build products and services on top of this infrastructure. These companies sought to disrupt existing industries while giving people access to new information, capabilities, and communities. This period was the Second Wave.

The evolution between the First and Second Waves of the Internet is analogous to the development of the transportation infrastructure in the United States. The nation’s first interstate highway system dates back to the late 1930s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt began sketching out lines on a map to connect the country from north to south and east to west. [4] It took another 20 years for Congress to begin large-scale funding of an interstate system with the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. [5] These early decades ramping up to full-scale highway construction could be understood as the First Wave in this analogy. The Second Wave would be characterized by the businesses that arose to serve the growing market of Americans hitting the road as the infrastructure was put in place. Americans’ love affair with fast food first began with new restaurants popping up to serve highway travelers. [6] Then suburban developers capitalized on the new ease of mobility created by highways to sell land to people who wanted to live farther and farther outside of...

Table of contents

• Overview
• Important People
• Key Takeaways
• Analysis
• Key Takeaway 2
• Key Takeaway 3
• Key Takeaway 4
• Key Takeaway 5
• Key Takeaway 6
• Key Takeaway 7
• Key Takeaway 8
• Author’s Style
• Author’s Perspective
• References