You might well ask yourself the same question before diving into an article as long as this one. The answer is that we all depend heavily on wires, but we hardly ever think about them. Before learning about FLAG, I knew that data packets could get from America to Asia or the Middle East, but I had no idea how. I knew that it had something to do... See more

“The internet is the most ambitious terraforming project ever undertaken by civilisation. Only instead of making not-Earth like planets more inhabitable for humans, we have made the Earth more inhabitable for humans (or non-corporeal personhood).”

The internet is, after all, a physical presence. Its tubes cross the ocean. Its servers fill up deserts in Arizona. Too often we’re not prepared to visualize it in that way. The photographer Trevor Paglen has done an essential project where he dives into the ocean and tracks the cables snaking along the sea floor. He shoots portraits of Miami Beach

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