• Mother Earth Mother Board, by Neal Stephenson (WIRED, 1996)
    https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass

    AUTHOR: NEAL STEPHENSON. DATE OF PUBLICATION: 12.01.96.
    12.01.96

    The hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, chronicling the laying of the longest wire on Earth.

    In which the hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, acquainting himself with the customs and dialects of the exotic Manhole Villagers of Thailand, the U-Turn Tunnelers of the Nile Delta, the Cable Nomads of Lan tao Island, the Slack Control Wizards of Chelmsford, the Subterranean Ex-Telegraphers of Cornwall, and other previously unknown and unchronicled folk; also, biographical sketches of the two long-dead Supreme Ninja Hacker Mage Lords of global telecommunications, and other material pertaining to the business and technology of Undersea Fiber-Optic Cables, as well as an account of the laying of the longest wire on Earth, which should not be without interest to the readers of Wired.

    Information moves, or we move to it.

    (...) in the 19th century, when the first feeble bits struggled down the first undersea cable joining the Old World to the New, it must have made people’s hair stand up on end in more than just the purely electrical sense – it must have seemed supernatural.

    #hacker_tourism #cables #oldies

    à propos de la pose du Fiber Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-Optic_Link_Around_the_Globe