Our decision to publish this manuscript on the world wide web came from a protracted and tedious course of attempting to work with both university and academic publishers. Bringing this manuscript to publication was an epic adventure in itself, so we decided to share our experience here, along with some commentary on academic publishing today and what we see as the future of this enterprise.

The Russian version of this book was released in 1995 in Kiev. By 1999 a sketchy publication contract had been secured by the author with a New York area academic publisher. From then until 2005 the manuscript collected dust at this press while they did nothing to push its production along, did no editing, and remained mostly in the shadows. Yet somehow during this time the manuscript had been assigned both cloth and paper ISBN numbers. We terminated our contract with this publisher in 2005 when the latest in a long series of editors responsible for the project called and said that they could not publish the manuscript because it would not generate enough profit.

After this, several well-known U.S.-based university presses requested from us the manuscript and its prospectus for review. The editor-in-chief at one of these presses solicited and received several professional and extremely positive peer reviews of the work from prominent scholars in the history of computing field: all of the reviewers urged the manuscript's adoption and publication. This press's editor then cut off communications with us entirely, and our repeated attempts to contact him via phone and email went unanswered for nearly a year. Almost as charming was our experience at another large university press: their acquisitions editor solicited our prospectus and two sample chapters, and wrote a few weeks later with the hedgy response: "our reader had some serious doubts about this project (its reliability; the weight of its contribution)." We never saw this reader's actual review for ourselves, and are still waiting for the reviewer to identify him/herself so we might hear his/her detailed comments on the book, in hopes that we might improve it.

Our experiences with other university presses were much more professional than the first few. Several other well-regarded university press editors who solicited and reviewed this manuscript were up front, open and fair in expressing their opinions, clearly explaining that the manuscript did not fit into the stream of their particular series of books, and relayed this information to us by either email or letter in a timely and reasonable manner.

We'll let you, Dear Reader, in on a dirty little secret: the kinds of things described above happen all the time in the academic publishing world. Scholarly presses are Byzantine, quirky and even secretive places. But there are good reasons for this. University publishing houses were originally set up not to generate great revenues, yet today American universities themselves are under pressure to behave increasingly like money-making entities. University press editors often face a tough battle throughout much of their careers: they don't receive great compensation, and the odd mix of intellectual egos that collect in academic publishing houses drives many editors to move on frequently, making for a "revolving door" situation so that productive, long-term working relationships between authors and editors are impossible to establish. And the long term results are excessive delays - in some cases up to ten years- in bringing books to market, virtually no marketing of these products, and exorbitant costs passed on to customers. But this is too long to wait, too cloistered, and too expensive given the instantaneous and increasingly free nature of information's availability today.

Meritocracy in basic science and technology research is supported by the important function of peer review, which promotes the absolutely critical values of openness and a positive scholarly environment. Yet the academic publishing culture is stuck in a backwards and outdated business model that is contrary to these values. It is a fact of life that the publishing industry in general is moving rapidly towards an emphasis on profits and away from purely scholarly criteria. The editor of this book is an avowed free-market capitalist, and to her this trend makes clear economic sense. But as a scholar, the editor encourages other academically-oriented researchers to pursue new and creative venues for marketing their work in a world where opportunities to publish books in the traditional sense are withering. Such entrepreneurship is vital to promoting and distributing important new research and knowledge.

Academic scholars generally insist on peer review to validate the depth and originality of their research. In most cases this system works well. So we solicited our own peer reviews of this manuscript from several well-known and respected scholars in the history of computing field, and incorporated a number of their suggestions for improving the manuscript. The reviewers loved this book. You can find their reviews in the eBook review section on this website.

This web-based book represents a modern approach to publishing. Electronic, or e-books, are the wave of the future. They are rapidly brought to market, and are accessible. Many e-books are already downloadable; more will be available as audio podcasts. Electronic publishing is seamless compared to the old fashioned way of sifting through a catalog and ordering books by phone or post. E-books are even more convenient than ordering an item online, where it may be available or backordered, then by the time it arrives at your house you have forgotten why you wanted it in the first place. If the item you want it is out of print, tough luck. And if that book was published by an academic press, there is a good chance that you'll not find one of the 700 or so total copies released. And almost no marketing of the book will have been done, either. We are in no way discouraging readers from purchasing books from Amazon.com for example, which is a very practical site for online shopping for many types of consumer goods. But it will be fascinating to observe how the publishing industry evolves in the next years and see whether or not academic and university publishers can successfully adapt to an increasingly paperless world.

So here is this manuscript at long last, all the way from the far reaches of the former USSR to the expanse of the world wide web. The pioneers of Soviet computing who predicted the rise of the internet and did what they could to promote technological creativity in their closed society, would undoubtedly approve of what we have done. Both the book and this site are generating both profits and attention: a big thank you goes out to all who have purchased the book so far.