The intention of the original book was to provide a short history and a current snapshot of the Web back in the mid 1990s. Because of various delays during the editorial process and some other issues, the book never got published; simply because it was outdated when it had been finally completed.

Then, in the early 21st century (well, this sounds funny... ;-) I suggested to the publisher to revive the project as a kind of easy to understand guide to the basics of the Web for educated, non-technical knowledge workers who still would have to deal with Web-related issues such as, e.g., managers, doctors or lawyers. But they were not really interested and I had too much to do in my new job in order to sell the idea to another publisher.

A few weeks ago, I had several "encounters" of the same kind: Three friends of mine (all non-technical) asked me about this and that regarding e-mail, wireless and SaaS and what this is all about and how this all ties together. Well, I thought let's see if I can find a nice Website for them to check out or a book that is well written, but I didn't really find anything suitable.

Finally, when talking to my friend Wolfgang (who also happens to be the designer of this Website) I had the idea to revive the book idea as a weblog, a blog. And I would take these questions and use them as topics for the first few posts. As background material I still have the original script of "Black Magic Web"; this way, I can reuse at least some of the text I wrote more than 10 years ago and maybe answer the one or other question about how the Web really works without confusing the readers too much, let's see... :-)