I’ve always regarded it as magical, the fact that you get on Wi-Fi and physical documents you can read and print come flying into your hands from anywhere on earth, or you see your friend’s vacation photos taken from their phone and uploaded to Facebook in real time.
Of course, some part of me realizes that there has to be a cable of some kind that the electrons use to fly across the planet (and under) the seas, but that was all very abstract and vague.
I’ve just finished reading Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, Andrew Blum’s fascinating chronicle describing what the physical internet actually looks and feels like. It was illuminating to discover that the cables connecting your iPhone in New York with an email server in London are essentially the same that were first used for telegrams and landlines decades ago.
One of the places he tried to explore but was firmly shut out of, were the major data centers used by Google and Facebook to house all our digital information, so sought after by online marketers, although his in-depth reporting gave some insight into their construction and functioning.
Therefore I was astounded by the news that Google has actually opened its most secretive centers to outside scrutiny – and built a web site displaying the most gorgeous, almost abstract photography, making one the foundations of online commerce look like modernist artworks.