The Physical Internet. The cloud is a cable on a seabed.
Front
The Physical Internet
The cloud is a cable on a seabed
The cables and buildings that carry what feels like thin air.
Back
About 99% of intercontinental data travels through fibre-optic cables lying on the ocean floor, some no thicker than a garden hose. Satellites carry almost none of it. The cloud has an address, a landing station, and a maintenance ship. When a ship's anchor drags across a cable, a country gets slower.
- Cable routes crowd into the same chokepoints as shipping: the Red Sea, the Strait of Malacca, the Luzon Strait. Geography did not stop mattering when data went digital.
- Repairs are done by a small global fleet of cable ships. There are fewer than a hundred, and hauling a cable up from the deep to splice it takes days.
Blum, Tubes (2012)
Keep exploring
Because you read The Physical Internet.
Water at Scale
Four generations of plumbing, all buried
The works that move, clean, and store water for a whole city.
The Grid
The machine that cannot store its product
The network that makes electricity and spends it in the same second.
The Address
Six digits that sort a billion letters
The system that turns a description of a place into a delivery.