Tubes: Behind the Scenes at the Internet

306 Pages·2012·9.285 MB·English

by  Andrew Blum

ANDREW BLUM
DTH
SCENES AT
THE INTERNET
‘Compelling and profound. You will never
open an email In quite the same way again.’
Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic
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‘We think of the internet as a kind of ether, a magical way
of transporting words and images from anywhere to
anywhere else. But there is a vast physical infrastructure
behind all that magic, and in Tubes, Andrew Blum, one
of our best writers on the built environment, discovers it
and turns it into a compelling story of an altogether new
realm where the virtual world meets the physical’
Paul Goldberger, Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker critic
‘With infectious wonder, Andrew Blum introduces us to the
internet’s geeky wizards and takes us on an amiably guided tour
of the world they’ve created. The internet that Blum’s beautifully
lucid prose makes real turns out to be if anything a more
marvellous place than the cloudy dreamland we’d imagined’
Donovan Hohn, author of Moby Duck
‘Andrew Blum’s journey in search of the internet - the
actual physical wires-and-tubes reality of our twenty-first-
century ethereal life - takes him from the subterranean world
under New York’s manhole covers to Cornish fields and
Portuguese cable-laying vessels. At once funny, prosaic,
sinister and wise, Blum’s tale is a beautifully written account
of the true human cost of all our remote connectivity’
Bella Bathurst, author of The Lighthouse Stevensons
BEHIND THE SCENES
AT THE INTERNET
ANDREW 6LUN
VIKING
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
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First published in the United States of America by HarperCoUins 2012
First published in Great Britain by Viking 2012
001
Copyright © Andrew Blum, 2012
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright
reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior
written permission of both the copyright owner and
the above publisher of this book
Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-670-91898-0
www.greenpenguin.co.uk
Penguin Books is committed to a sustainable
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Paper from
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ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON
ForDavina and Phoebe

It is not down in any map; true places never are.
-HERMAN MELVILLE
Somehow I knew that the notional space behind all of the
computer screens would be one single universe.
-WILLIAM GIBSON

Contents
Prologue / 1
1 / The Mop / 11
2 / A Network of Networks / 35
3 / Only Connect / 69
4 / The Whole Internet / 105
5 / Cities of Light / 157
6 / The Longest Tubes / 191
7 / Where Onto Sleeps / 227
Epilogue / 263
Acknowledgments / 269
Notes / 273
Index / 281
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