Understanding the Disruptive Innovation Wrought by Computers and the Internet: A Review

This review essay amalgamates the economic dynamics found in the rise of the computer industry, as detailed in Martin Campbell-Kelly and Daniel D. Garcia-Swartz, From mainframes to smartphones: A history of the international computer industry (Harvard University Press, 2015), and the metamorphosis of data networks in Shane Greenstein, How the Internet became commercial: Innovation, privatization, and the birth of a new network (Princeton University Press, 2015). These developments have altered the fields of industrial organization and public policy, while shaping the economy of the future. Both books offer deep and illuminating histories that inform our understanding of markets, technology, and government regulation.