At base, it's about the wires...

The physicalness of the internet has been all up-in-our-faces these last couple days: a nation, it turns out, can just unplug itself, and corporate citizens of the world's great democracies help out. [See, however, Vodafone's current explanation.]

The Atlantic has a fascinating piece on the infrastructure of the internet. All that data travels through relatively few nodes, it seems. Why some nodes and not others? Undoubtedly the answer is history.

I can't help but think of that first trans-atlantic cable.

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