https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/the-hidden-world-of-undersea-cables
"
Where is the internet?
That sounds like rather a strange question, but when most people try to answer
it…they can’t. We have a vague sense that the internet must have some physical
basis, but, for most of us, our precision doesn’t go much beyond the idea that
there are probably a lot of wires and servers and computers somewhere.
Part of the answer lies in sprawling data centers. Most of the time you write
an e-mail, for example, odds are pretty good that the data will pass through
Loudon County, Virginia. 300 data centers are clustered in a tiny area outside
of Washington, DC. They process, by one estimate, 70 percent of the world’s
internet traffic every day.
But, in a way, there’s a better answer than data centers. It turns out that
most of the internet runs through roughly 500 undersea cables that connect the
world, totalling about 900,000 miles—enough to wrap around the entire
circumference of the Earth nearly forty times.
As Google’s Jayne Stowell told the
New York Times: “People think that data is
in the cloud, but it’s not. It’s in the ocean.”
The hidden world of undersea cables is a fascinating one, and entering this
unknown world takes us from colonial-era telegraphs to sharks, volcanoes,
saboteurs, and spies."
Via Esther Schindler.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
