paperback, 304 pages
Published May 28, 2013 by Ecco.
A travel book exploring the physical places and connections of the infrastructure of the Internet. Along the way, he explores data warehouses, meets some of the historical figures in the creation of the Internet and the people who keep everything humming along so we can get on with our virtual lives.
Fascinating journalistic account of the physical sure of the internet: where the cables are and where they connect, how they're laid on sea floors, dragged up, and connected together, and where data is stored. Definitely not a book for someone seeking technical details - which I myself wasn't - but a well-written travelogue and history.
blum delivers on the "center" of the internet as places. using (my terms) a graph-theory metaphor: edges and nodes, with equal attention to both. but only the stuff you can see. i.e. we don't hear much about the soft stuff. TCP/IP is mentioned, barely, HTTP not at all. email in terms of his sending pictures home. It would have been good to hear what the "UU" in UUNET stood for, for example. for me, the missing ingredients in this book are the invisible architectural components.
interesting story, well told.
