It’s hard not to be talking about “the Internet” right now. By this I mean that the idea of a free and open network – and the right to unfettered access to this place – for sharing information through some out-of-sight magic, some handoff up in the cloud, has so permeated popular consciousness that, much like wealth distribution, the Internet problem (including digital piracy) is past a point where it’ll ever again be even partially off the agenda.So I think it’s now, more than ever, that it could be worth reminding ourselves that in addition to this ephemeral “Internet,” the ideal of which is so worth fighting for that we’re seeing legions continually taking to both virtual and street actions in its name, there is the physical, dirty thing, “the Internet.” The stark reality is that a lot of what it comes down to is an expanding mesh of bundled, submarine fiber-optic cable networks snaking across hundreds of thousands of kilometers of ocean floor.Just try and imagine the sheer physicality of these transit networks, which handle essentially all your international cyber activity in the form of tiny pulses of light. When we talk about controlling – or taking back – the Internet, in a lot of ways we’re talking about what we should be doing with a massive, massive series of corporate-owned pipes that collectively bear the load of about 99 percent of all international telephone and Internet traffic.Read the rest at Motherboard.
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