The Internet's Infrastructure

Kindle price just dropped to $2.99 on the Kindle version of "Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet".

Review from Scientific American:

In 2006 Alaskan senator Ted Stevens described the Internet as a “series of tubes,” a quip that earned the octogenarian widespread mockery. But as Blum notes in his charming look at the physical infrastructure that underlies the Web, Stevens wasn’t all that wrong. Bits sail through a worldwide network of fiber-optic cables and come together in junctions where Internet providers connect their pipes to the networks of others. Blum’s transcontinental journey exposes some of the important issues confronting the Internet, such as the occasional disconnect between the interests of the corporations who control the physical pipes and the good of the network as a whole. “If you believe the Internet is magic,” he writes, “then it’s hard to grasp its physical reality.” I’d turn this around: only by understanding the physical richness of the Internet can we truly grok the thorny forces that are shaping its growth. — Michael Moyer

If this is your type of thing, you'll love sci-fi legend Neal Stephenson's epic book-length (42000 words!) look at how transatlantic cable gets laid from Wired Magazine circa 1996.


Here's the middle ground I've staked out with my book collecting obsession (which combines poorly with the fact that I read as slowly as a second grader): when I hear about a great book, I add it to my queue at eReaderIQ, which notifies me when the Kindle version's price drops. Sometimes it takes years. But, this way, the books I accumulate 1. cost almost nothing, and 2. don't occupy physical space, and 3. are spread out over time. Compulsion neither fully indulged nor stanched!