WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

HE DESIGNED THE INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT TODAY. SO WHY ISN'T HE IN THE PANTHEON OF SILICON VALLEY FOUNDERS?

- BY CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY DARE-BRYAN

On 2023, Inc. launched Computer Freaks, a podcast that explored the early days of the Arpanet, the precursor to the internet. My father, U.S. Air Force major Joseph Haughney, ran the Arpanet for the Department of Defense from 1979 to 1981. When, in 2022, he learned he had dementia, I gathered over 100 hours of audio interviews with him and other early founders about what the internet's creators dreamed of for this fledgling technology.

The second season of Computer Freaks moves to the 1990s, and looks at the early careers of the tech entrepreneurs who shaped the world we live in today, such as browser pioneer Marc Andreessen and graphic designer Kevin Hughes, who rode the dot-com boom—and then crashed out.

KEVIN HUGHES RECEIVED his first Apple IIe computer in the seventh grade, in 1985, when he developed childhood leukemia and his family wanted to give him something to do. At the time, the internet was a colorless destination that Hughes told me consisted mainly of “paragraphs of texts, links, and bulleted lists on a gray background.”

FAR LEFT; KEVIN HUGHES AT HIS APARTMENT IN OAHU, WHERE HE SHARES A GARAGE (ABOVE) WITH A NEIGHBOR AND ENJOYS A MOUNTAIN VIEW.

He got to work in the basement of his split-level Marin County family house, teaching himself Applesoft BASIC, and designing the web that he wanted to see, with vivid colors and art inspired by the world around him: Max Headroom, Tron, Devo, Rubik's Cube, Legos.