The Invisible Seafaring Industry That Keeps the Internet Afloat

Undersea cables, and long-distance communications in general, became the highest of high tech, with many of the same connotations as rocket science or nuclear physics or brain surgery would acquire in later decades. Some countries and companies (the distinction between countries and companies is hazy in the telco world) became very good at it, and ... See more

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 wit... See more

Today, another 120 years later, we take wires completely for granted. This is most unwise. People who use the Internet (or for that matter, who make long-distance phone calls) but who don't know about wires are just like the millions of complacent motorists who pump gasoline into their cars without ever considering where it came from or how it foun... See more

Information moves, or we move to it. Moving to it has rarely been popular and is growing unfashionable; nowadays we demand that the information come to us. This can be accomplished in three basic ways: 1) moving physical media around, 2) broadcasting radiation through space, and 3) sending signals through wires. This article is about what will, for... See more

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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I’ve recently begun to visit the internet. There, I’ve found cement, metal gates, water tanks, miles of solar farms, buzzing wires, fiber optic trenches, and towers. Data centers, often hidden from the everyday ‘user,’ house rows of blinking servers containing the vast contents of our digital lives. Inside these electronics lie conductive materials... See more