{"id":33659,"date":"2015-11-21T04:00:29","date_gmt":"2015-11-21T09:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=33659"},"modified":"2015-11-20T21:31:28","modified_gmt":"2015-11-21T02:31:28","slug":"submarine-cables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/11\/21\/submarine-cables\/","title":{"rendered":"Submarine cables"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The Atlantic<\/em>, Ingrid Burrington<\/a> tries to persuade her editor that the submarine cable network is still of critical importance to understanding the cloud:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo Ingrid,\u201d Sam asked, \u201chow exactly will you convince your editor that submarine cables are relevant to The Cloud?\u201d<\/p>\n

We were maybe still in New Mexico or somewhere in Kansas. It was a night drive. Time moves weirdly during night drives. All roads basically become the closing moments of Terminator 2<\/em>. Whenever it was and wherever it was, it was apparently a good time for my driving partner to pose questions about some of the stories I had lined up for this series, including one exceptionally long piece about a submarine cable (which, dear reader, will run later this week).<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d I replied, \u201cclouds are just evaporated molecules of water that emerge from larger bodies of water. Oceans are bodies of water. It\u2019s … it\u2019s relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Look, I was pretty tired. But if there is a case to be made for placing submarine cables within the landscape of The Cloud, it’s more a case for historical continuity and resonance. Cloud infrastructure is a landscape of interdependent systems, submarine cables among them.<\/p>\n

Submarine cables don’t come up in the news that often, but if they do it seems to be in two forms: short articles reminding everyone that the Telegeography Submarine Cable Map<\/a> exists, and short articles of hand-wavey reminders that submarine cables are vulnerable to harm (from tectonic plates, ship anchors, sharks, and terrorists, among others).<\/p>\n

While these are totally valid topics to explore, I often find these stories lacking in context about the various systems, geographies, and politics that shape submarine networks. While there are lots of other super compelling aspects of submarine-cable law and policy (says the person who owns a copy of Submarine Cables: The Handbook of Law and Policy<\/em>), here are two questions that might help readers take in Telegeography takes with a little less gee-whiz and a little more clarity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Speaking of submarine cables, I was unaware of how many northern Canadian communities are connected via that method:<\/p>\n

\"Submarine<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Atlantic, Ingrid Burrington tries to persuade her editor that the submarine cable network is still of critical importance to understanding the cloud: \u201cSo Ingrid,\u201d Sam asked, \u201chow exactly will you convince your editor that submarine cables are relevant to The Cloud?\u201d We were maybe still in New Mexico or somewhere in Kansas. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[711,58],"class_list":["post-33659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-infrastructure","tag-internet"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8KT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33661,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33659\/revisions\/33661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}