Status
Available
Call number
Publication
New York, NY : Ecco, c2012.
Description
When your Internet cable leaves your living room, where does it go? Almost everything about our day-to-day lives--and the broader scheme of human culture--can be found on the Internet. But what is it physically? And where is it really? Our mental map of the network is as blank as the map of the ocean that Columbus carried on his first Atlantic voyage. The Internet, its material nuts and bolts, is an unexplored territory. Until now. In Tubes, journalist Andrew Blum goes inside the Internet's physical infrastructure and flips on the lights, revealing an utterly fresh look at the online world we think we know. It is a shockingly tactile realm of unmarked compounds, populated by a special caste of engineer who pieces together our networks by hand; where glass fibers pulse with light and creaky telegraph buildings, tortuously rewired, become communication hubs once again. From the room in Los Angeles where the Internet first flickered to life to the caverns beneath Manhattan where new fiber-optic cable is buried; from the coast of Portugal, where a ten-thousand-mile undersea cable just two thumbs wide connects Europe and Africa, to the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, where Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have built monumental data centers--Blum chronicles the dramatic story of the Internet's development, explains how it all works, and takes the first-ever in-depth look inside its hidden monuments. This is a book about real places on the map: their sounds and smells, their storied pasts, their physical details, and the people who live there. For all the talk of the "placelessness" of our digital age, the Internet is as fixed in real, physical spaces as the railroad or telephone. You can map it and touch it, and you can visit it. Is the Internet in fact "a series of tubes" as Ted Stevens, the late senator from Alaska, once famously described it? How can we know the Internet's possibilities if we don't know its parts? Like Tracy Kidder's classic The Soul of a New Machine or Tom Vanderbilt's recent bestseller Traffic, Tubes combines on-the-ground reporting and lucid explanation into an engaging, mind-bending narrative to help us understand the physical world that underlies our digital lives.… (more)
Media reviews
[This] quixotic and winning book is an attempt to comprehend the physical realities of the Internet, to describe how this seemingly intangible thing is actually constructed.
User reviews
LibraryThing member jacoombs
A surprisingly compelling read about the hardware (tubes) or physical infrastructure that enables the Internet. Challenged at times by repeated descriptions of non-descript office buildings housing routers, wires and servers. At other times, though, almost mystical about the route our data takes
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over this physical infrastructure, Show Less
LibraryThing member nnschiller
This is a solid book with good journalism about a piece of our information infrastructure that is vital, but poorly understood and frequently ignored. Andrew Blum sets out with a project: follow the cable out of his house back to the physical structure of the Internet. What follows is a interesting
I really enjoyed listening to Blum read Tubes. Many author-read books on Audible make me wish they'd have sprung for voice talent, but Blum does a good job here. I enjoyed the content and subject matter. I enjoyed his perspective, humor, and insight. Over all, this was very well done.
So, if you have ever been curious about how fiber networks are structured or want to know how the internet gets to your house, read this. If you want to more about the OSI network model, router protocols, or packet switching, look elsewhere. If fiber networks and physical infrastructure bore you, avoid at all costs.
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and personable exploration of global networking. Blum avoids technical talk, I didn't have to use much of what I learned getting an ancient Network+ certification to follow him. {Tech: He briefly mentions TCP and IP and also the physical, network, and transport layers, but not in the context of the OSI model.} While Blum is no engineer, I think he make wise choices about how to frame his book. His story of following the tubes from his house to find the Internet is interesting. He identifies hidden parts of our global network structure and sheds some light on an industry that is usually obscure. Sure, we all heard about Global Crossing when they went bankrupt, but Blum explains how the undersea fiber business works in lay persons terms that is illuminating.I really enjoyed listening to Blum read Tubes. Many author-read books on Audible make me wish they'd have sprung for voice talent, but Blum does a good job here. I enjoyed the content and subject matter. I enjoyed his perspective, humor, and insight. Over all, this was very well done.
So, if you have ever been curious about how fiber networks are structured or want to know how the internet gets to your house, read this. If you want to more about the OSI network model, router protocols, or packet switching, look elsewhere. If fiber networks and physical infrastructure bore you, avoid at all costs.
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LibraryThing member EpicTale
Sadly, I thought "Tubes" was really lame. The author sets up the book by erroneously positing that because the Internet is a placeless, virtual world, the physical infrastructure behind it must also be some kind of cosmic cloud. Then he spends the entire book knocking down his own silly scarecrow.
Unsolicited advice to Blum: if your goal is to describe a super-geeky subject, write like a real geek; and drop all but the most incisive nuggets of extraneous observations and comments.
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"Tubes" is a liberal artist's exposition of ruminations on literature, historiography, painting, etc., which he somehow bolts onto an Internet-for-Dummies, not-detailed-enough description of fiber networks, data centers, peering sites, etc. Blum goes downright goofy at times, for example when he witnesses policemen boarding an airplane and writes of them coming for him in retribution for his having toured an important private Internet facility (as an invited guest) the previous day. Unsolicited advice to Blum: if your goal is to describe a super-geeky subject, write like a real geek; and drop all but the most incisive nuggets of extraneous observations and comments.
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LibraryThing member cyclismotron
I was first alerted to this book when a short illustrative photo-essay was published in Wired, showing some of the facilities that the author had visited. Having embarked upon the information superhighway when geography still seemed like a relevant factor to the home user - UK game servers were
The author is mainly a writer on architecture, rather than technology, which was of great value to this book. It meant he was able to succinctly capture the physical essence of a building or place in evocative language. He was also very effective at maintaining the reader's interest in his quest to track down something which is actually of minor concern on a day to day basis and, as he says in the book, the physical reality of 'the internet' is rather non-descript and generic; it is the dream of all the information that flows through it that makes the hundreds of thousands of boxes and lights, and millions of metres of cables exciting.
My only complaint was that some of the chapters jumped around a little bit, without it being clear why one episode was being left apparently incomplete. This was a minor quibble. I would definitely be interested in reading more of Mr Blum's books, and more books by 'physical' writers about the the manifestation of intangible things like the internet.
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always significantly faster than American ones - I was interested in a physical history of the internet.The author is mainly a writer on architecture, rather than technology, which was of great value to this book. It meant he was able to succinctly capture the physical essence of a building or place in evocative language. He was also very effective at maintaining the reader's interest in his quest to track down something which is actually of minor concern on a day to day basis and, as he says in the book, the physical reality of 'the internet' is rather non-descript and generic; it is the dream of all the information that flows through it that makes the hundreds of thousands of boxes and lights, and millions of metres of cables exciting.
My only complaint was that some of the chapters jumped around a little bit, without it being clear why one episode was being left apparently incomplete. This was a minor quibble. I would definitely be interested in reading more of Mr Blum's books, and more books by 'physical' writers about the the manifestation of intangible things like the internet.
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LibraryThing member yeremenko
Many nonfiction books deal with fascinating topics and the information is enough to drive the story. Truly excellent books ,like this one, feature good writing. Blum tells a technical story with a narrative rich with humanity, personality and life while he explores the often stark inanimate word of
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the physical infrastructure of the internet. Show Less
LibraryThing member applemcg
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
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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. Show Less
LibraryThing member bluepigeon
You know when you finish a long novel and think, this could have been a short novella? Well, Tubes could have been a 100-page non-fiction novella (is there a name for that? pamphlet, in the old sense?) I really wanted to learn about the physical existence of the components of the internet(s). And I
Ultimately, what was most interesting to me was the internet gossip. How Google was mean, and Facebook as open, but Google guarded privacy much more than Facebook, and who runs the exchanges, and who is connected to whom, etc. In the end, I don't think I needed to read Tubes to learn all that, not to mention that most of it was already old news, even for me.
Unlike others, I did not find Blum's tendency to quote literary works annoying. And I liked learning about the haphazard way the internet developed and the way it followed the grooves and paths etches on Earth's surface by natural forces as well as historical events.
What was lacking, I thought, was a real worldview. Yes, it fucking matters where the fiber runs through and where the data centers are. Proximity and fiber means cheap, good connectivity. Some parts of the world were and are still dark; and the cost of access is steep for the local income level. Blum touches on this briefly, but never with the awareness of the imbalance in the world. He emphasizes, over and over, how the most active and heavy internet traffic is between London and New York... Hmmm...
I recommend this book for those who are not familiar with bits, fiber optics, routers, and who really do not understand what "the cloud" is. If you have a pretty good sense of these things, you can probably skip reading Tubes.
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did. But not much else here. Perhaps I knew more about the internet than I had thought, which clearly is no fault of Blum's. Ultimately, what was most interesting to me was the internet gossip. How Google was mean, and Facebook as open, but Google guarded privacy much more than Facebook, and who runs the exchanges, and who is connected to whom, etc. In the end, I don't think I needed to read Tubes to learn all that, not to mention that most of it was already old news, even for me.
Unlike others, I did not find Blum's tendency to quote literary works annoying. And I liked learning about the haphazard way the internet developed and the way it followed the grooves and paths etches on Earth's surface by natural forces as well as historical events.
What was lacking, I thought, was a real worldview. Yes, it fucking matters where the fiber runs through and where the data centers are. Proximity and fiber means cheap, good connectivity. Some parts of the world were and are still dark; and the cost of access is steep for the local income level. Blum touches on this briefly, but never with the awareness of the imbalance in the world. He emphasizes, over and over, how the most active and heavy internet traffic is between London and New York... Hmmm...
I recommend this book for those who are not familiar with bits, fiber optics, routers, and who really do not understand what "the cloud" is. If you have a pretty good sense of these things, you can probably skip reading Tubes.
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LibraryThing member theageofsilt
I was really annoyed by incessant "gee-whiz, the internet has a physical structure, who knew" commentary that is the majority of this book. Do people really think the internet comes to you via magical unicorns? Our internet service was interrupted when someone ran into a connection box in our
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neighborhood. My front yard was dug up by our service provider upgrading our cables. This book is slim on content, if you are really interested in the topic. Show Less
LibraryThing member knightlight777
Every now and then I get taken in by a book based on a cool title with and equally cool looking cover. They say never judge a book by its cover. Blum's topic, the nuts and bolts of what constitutes the Internet worldwide, I thought would be interesting. In two words, it wasn't. In three, it really
In a rambling way Blum prods into unknown alley ways, manhole covers, and away cheaply tiled box rooms around the world. Stuff of not exactly spell binding excitement. If the thought of discovering large routers and winding tangles of cables arouses you then maybe this book is what you have been waiting for. Or maybe you are an aspiring network engineer.
When I start a book it is rare I will not complete it regardless of how into it I am. This book I ended up parsing out by designating 'X' number of pages to get through each day to complete it. Once again I learned the lesson, don't judge a book by its cover.
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wasn't.In a rambling way Blum prods into unknown alley ways, manhole covers, and away cheaply tiled box rooms around the world. Stuff of not exactly spell binding excitement. If the thought of discovering large routers and winding tangles of cables arouses you then maybe this book is what you have been waiting for. Or maybe you are an aspiring network engineer.
When I start a book it is rare I will not complete it regardless of how into it I am. This book I ended up parsing out by designating 'X' number of pages to get through each day to complete it. Once again I learned the lesson, don't judge a book by its cover.
Show Less
LibraryThing member willszal
Phenomenally interesting book about the physical infrastructure of the cloud. Transcontinental fiber-optic cables. Data centers. Internet exchanges. All the good stuff that makes the internet possible.
LibraryThing member delphica
This was very exciting, in an armchair tech sort of way. The author goes out and visits various physical places where "the internet" happens, like major switching hubs, content storage, and the points where submarine communications cables COME OUT OF THE OCEAN LIKE A KRAKEN. As you can probably
I did find it a little odd that he kept framing his descriptions with this theme that "the typical internet user never thinks about WHERE this stuff is happening," which I could believe is true, but rather don't think it's an accurate description that the typical internet user who bothers to read this book never thinks about it. I think about it all the time, and so do a lot of people I know.
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tell, the last one was a special geeky thrill for me, because that is still something that boggles my mind, and now I want to go on a field trip to Porthcurno (the whole thing sounds delightfully mundane, not only the cable part, like you would go, and people would ask what you did, and you would say "I looked at a cable and then did nothing for a week. Nothing!" And not in a relaxing, spa nothing way, but literally nothing.). At any rate, the author then describes all of these places in a fairly accessible way with geeky enthusiasm.I did find it a little odd that he kept framing his descriptions with this theme that "the typical internet user never thinks about WHERE this stuff is happening," which I could believe is true, but rather don't think it's an accurate description that the typical internet user who bothers to read this book never thinks about it. I think about it all the time, and so do a lot of people I know.
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LibraryThing member jamesb
A digerati travelogue, from an author who seems as much sociologist as infrastructure geek. Worth the read, even if you think you know the topic.
LibraryThing member Petroglyph
Andrew Blum is a journalist who wonders about the physical reality of the internet: How does his computer connect to the net? Where do the cables go to? How do they join up? Where are all the data centers? What pathway do the data packets take, and what does that look like on maps of the US and the
Blum decides to travel around the US and Europe to talk to experts at various levels of complexity: the ISP centre, Internet Exchanges, and data centres belonging to Google and Facebook. Most of the facilities consist of drab, anonymous-looking box-buildings in out-of-the-way places. He is present when an underwater cable coming from West Africa is connected to one in Portugal; he also visits the location where a transatlantic cable arrives in Cornwall.
This was interesting: Blum does a good job of leading us through his journey of discovery. What I didn’t like was his tendency to inject too much drama and pathos into his writings: he likes to draw conclusions that, when written up in the style of, say, the Time Magazine or Vanity Fair, spiral into Anthopology and Large-Scale Societal Impact Of Things. Several of his musings on those topics are fairly pedestrian, but the overwrought way he presents them makes them seem hollow sometimes.
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world? Blum decides to travel around the US and Europe to talk to experts at various levels of complexity: the ISP centre, Internet Exchanges, and data centres belonging to Google and Facebook. Most of the facilities consist of drab, anonymous-looking box-buildings in out-of-the-way places. He is present when an underwater cable coming from West Africa is connected to one in Portugal; he also visits the location where a transatlantic cable arrives in Cornwall.
This was interesting: Blum does a good job of leading us through his journey of discovery. What I didn’t like was his tendency to inject too much drama and pathos into his writings: he likes to draw conclusions that, when written up in the style of, say, the Time Magazine or Vanity Fair, spiral into Anthopology and Large-Scale Societal Impact Of Things. Several of his musings on those topics are fairly pedestrian, but the overwrought way he presents them makes them seem hollow sometimes.
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LibraryThing member dmturner
A little dry at times but a fascinating idea and the author did a lot of research and went all over the world looking for the Internet. “To look for the Internet, I had gotten off the Internet. I had stepped away from my keyboard to look around and talk.”
LibraryThing member dhmontgomery
An enlightening book about the physical reality behind the Internet. The book was slighter than it had to be, padding a relatively small number of revelations with anecdotes and a travelogue. But it's accessible, interesting and a brisk read.
LibraryThing member Castlelass
Part memoir, part travelogue, part history, this book provides insight into the physical infrastructure of the internet. The author went on a personal quest to understand its physical presence. He visits locations around the world and takes the reader along for the ride. It is not for techies. It
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is more for everyday people who think of “the internet” as ubiquitous presence that has no physical reality. In fact, it includes many tangible pieces and parts – tubes, wires, fiber optic cables on the ocean floor, servers, routers, buildings that house a multitude of connection points, and much more. Recommended to those who enjoy books on “how things work.” Show Less
LibraryThing member rosalita
Man, did I want to love this book more than I did! Despite my lack of video gamer cred, I am fascinated by the Internet and how it has developed and evolved over the years. The premise of this book seemed so promising: "a journey to the center of the Internet", where the actual cables and network
Alas, either I am not intellectually equipped to understand the science-y stuff (very possible), or Andrew Blum is not literarily equipped to explain the science-y stuff to non-science people. I was lost a great deal of the time as I tried to understand his explanations of how computers connect and send data hither and yon in a vast web of wires and tubes.
The subject continues to interest me, so I'll be on the lookout for another book that does for me what I had hoped this one would.
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connections are made? Sign me up!Alas, either I am not intellectually equipped to understand the science-y stuff (very possible), or Andrew Blum is not literarily equipped to explain the science-y stuff to non-science people. I was lost a great deal of the time as I tried to understand his explanations of how computers connect and send data hither and yon in a vast web of wires and tubes.
The subject continues to interest me, so I'll be on the lookout for another book that does for me what I had hoped this one would.
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LibraryThing member kropferama
A travelogue of a different kind. Looking at the geography of the internet requires physical travel and the ability to apply metaphors to that which can't be seen. Andrew Blum travels the route of the internet to discover how much it still relies on the old geography of past trade routes. His story
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benefits from the willingness of internet companies and engineers to show him the guts of internet. Google is the one exception--his visit to their data center is by his own admission a "farce" where he shown nothing more interesting than their lunch room. Written at a level that the non-technical audience (me) can understand. Recommend it. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
2012
ISBN
9780061994937
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