A fascinating in-depth look at the maintenance of undersea cables:
The industry responsible for this crucial work traces its origins back far beyond the internet, past even the telephone, to the early days of telegraphy. It’s invisible, underappreciated, analog.
It’s a truism that people don’t think about infrastructure until it breaks, but they tend not to think about the fixing of it, either.
A potted history of communication networks from the pony express and the telegraph to ethernet and wi-fi.
Ainissa Ramirez recounts the story of the transatlantic telegraph cable, the Apollo project of its day.
A transatlantic cable, hurrah!
Remember Aaron’s dConstruct talk? Well, the Atlantic has more details of his work at the Cooper Hewitt museum in this wide-ranging piece that investigates the role of museums, the value of APIs, and the importance of permanent URLs.
As I was leaving, Cope recounted how, early on, a curator had asked him why the collections website and API existed. Why are you doing this?
His retrospective answer wasn’t about scholarship or data-mining or huge interactive exhibits. It was about the web.
I find this incredibly inspiring.
