Andrew Blum – Close Encounters with the Internet

When I lived in Calabria it was impossible to transfer files that were bigger than 500Mb. Not even the computer shops in the capital of the region could do this for you. One day a happy rumour began to spread: The internet had arrived. On all the little roads that crossed villages and rural area, a ditch was made through the asfalt. On one occasion I could see this work in action. We stopped the car and asked the young man in the excavator. Yes, he confirmed, it is the internet. His face showed a glow of intense happyness.

From the blurb of Andrew Blum’s book Tubes

“From the room in Los Angeles where the Internet first flickered to life to the caverns beneath Manhattan as new fiber-optic cable is buried; from the coast of Portugal, where a ten-thousand-mile undersea cable just two thumbs wide connects Europe and Africa, to the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, where Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have built monumental data centers Blum chronicles the dramatic story of the Internet development, explains how it all works, and takes the first ever in-depth look inside its hidden monuments.”

The talk was held at the Deep Cables conferences in Berlin on 17th of June 2016.

The conference was organised by Disruption Network Lab.

Andrew Blum.Tubes

Please check

the Schedule

for broadcast hours/days.

Get the Radio On App

bco