Esther Dyson begins her book with a chapter that describes her history and involvement with the evolution of the Internet. She gives a detailed account of her educational and professional background. She includes the personal information to give the reader an understanding of who she is and why she was compelled to pursue a career centered on the concept of markets. This chapter touches on some of the topics included in the book and explains her position as a founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization deeply involved in the activities of the Internet and its future.

 Esther Dyson attended Harvard University where she majored in economics. This where she learned about the significance of marketing and how she felt she could somehow begin to change how the government dealt with economic issues. She began as a Wall Street journalist for Forbes magazine and eventually left to investigate the inner workings of the new growing industry of computer technology. Dyson began to meet several men that would later become CEOs and important individuals in the computer industry. She was able to work and interact with people who were beginning to create products and new markets for technology. She enjoyed and admired the freedom that companies had in Silicon Valley to produce and operate without the government restrictions.

Dyson discusses the changes in the PC business, which included the transition form manipulation databases to software that organized and affected the user's information on a new level. Products like GroupWare (networking) created new issues for businesses. She began a PC Forum, an annual computer conference, during the 1980's that served as a large meeting for all people involved in the business of computers to discuss and share ideas, products, and conduct business. Since she was no longer the only one researching and writing about the industry, she decided to venture out of the country and examine the evolution of computers abroad.

Dyson went to Russia in order to observe the impact of markets on economic growth. Russia did not have a system of free-market economics, so she was able to see how markets functioned in the case where there was not one in tact. She realized the significance of the exchange of information and communication between those competing in markets. She also realized the need for some degree of regulations to ensure that the market functioned properly. Dyson became heavily involved with advising, organizing, and developing the computer industries and markets in Eastern Europe.

By 1989, she had begun to use e-mail and the Internet to contact her associates in Europe and Russia. The Net soon developed from a tool used by few for researchers and scientists to one that included all sorts of "Techies" and commercial services. In 1991 she joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an organization that deals with online civil liberties. In 1994 she became involved with the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council, a council whose purpose was to direct the growth of the Internet without direct government control. Decisions about intellectual property, privacy, and security where addressed.

She became the chairman of the EFF and has changed its focus to appropriate governance with an emphasis Net user's individual responsibility of protecting themselves. She believes that each user should have control over the content she views. She feels that the EFF, as the guardians of the Net, should not enforce its views or totally direct the growth of the Internet, yet it should discuss and change its role as it exchanges more information with others.

It is clear that Esther Dyson discusses her understanding of the Internet and the computer industry from a point of view that has been influenced by her knowledge of marketing (ideas from her father's interpretations and a model relating markets to theories about evolution). Her own experiences in world travel and research and her relationships with people in the industry from its beginning have given her a unique opportunity to become an expert in the field. She approaches the rest of the book from a marketing and governance perspective. It was important that she included the personal information in the first chapter because it creates the theme or climate for the rest of the book.