Fertig gelesen: The Undersea Network

Where is the Internet coming from and how and when was it built? It’s a network of tubes, or rather cables, and these days they are mostly fiber. Much of it was built during the dotcom boom, but little has been written.

The Undersea Network , Nicole Starosielski

Nicole Starosielski is a professor at New York University Steinhardt, and specializes in Internet Infrastructure, specifically underwater sea cables. In her book, she documents the history and development of the infrastructure that carries more than 99% of todays Internet data, the backbone that defines the global transport capacity of the Internet.

Starosielski not only explores the technology, but also the topography and history of the cables, and of course the policts that follow inevitably if you plug a cable that connects to remote locations. The book meanders between travel report, history book and sociotechnical politics brief.

A companion to the book, the Website Surfacing allows the reader to interactively follow and explore the structures the book explains. Search terms at the beginning of each chapters imagery link the chapter in the book to the interactive display on the Surfacing website.

“The Undersea Network ”, Nicole Starosielsky, EUR 19.61 on Kindle