<story><title>Building a subsea cable to better connect Africa</title><url>https://engineering.fb.com/connectivity/2africa/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bcaa7f3a8bbc</author><text>Note to other readers: It requires 2 hours to read.&lt;p&gt;This is a timeless classic from Wired, written by Neal Stephenson in 1996. I love this article not only because of the article itself, but its enthusiasm and energy from the age it was written in. It was an age with a bright future where everything seems possible. Back at that time, Wired represented the avant-garde of Silicon Valley (including the fact that Neal Stephenson being the author) that was going to revolutionize everything through computing and the Internet, the free and fast flow of information enables decentralization, and would liberate us from all the old forms of political control.&lt;p&gt;In particular, this article had a clear techno-libertarian overtone, about how authoritarianism and monopoly would be defeated through disruptive innovation. One goal of constructing FLAG (the cable) was explicitly to reduce the reliance of the infrastructure of the United States and to challenge the role played by traditional ISP over the control. The article even mentioned the early cypherpunk movement (in the mid of the first Crypto War), and acknowledged &amp;quot;Virtually all communications between countries take place through a very small number of bottlenecks, and the available bandwidth simply isn&amp;#x27;t that great. Even outfits like FLAG don&amp;#x27;t really grok the Internet.&amp;quot; But FLAG was still seen as a step moving towards the correct direction and the beginning of the new network order.&lt;p&gt;The dream eventually came to an end. Wired-inspired DotCom bubble busted. Although FLAG was the first move to break U.S. and traditional ISP&amp;#x27;s monopoly, future projects in the next 10 years didn&amp;#x27;t quite accomplish this goal. Silicon Valley became the new giant establishment and monopoly (the critics say massive deregulation was partially responsible). Authoritarian regimes have done a good job preventing the information flowing online to bring liberal political changes. And the Internet has been seized as the means of mass surveillance.&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, the late 90s was a great age to be alive with that dream.</text></item><item><author>supernova87a</author><text>This doesn&amp;#x27;t directly have to do with this article, but in case some people have not seen it before:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wired.com&amp;#x2F;1996&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;ffglass&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wired.com&amp;#x2F;1996&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;ffglass&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; &amp;quot;Mother Earth Mother Board&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This is a good hour-long read, one of the most interesting descriptions I ever read of all that goes into funding, building, operating subsea fiber optic cables that connect us around the world.  It&amp;#x27;s a couple years out of date, but very entertaining.  Goes from the physics of transmission all the way to the ships and people who lay the cable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gz5</author><text>well worth the time to read.  multiple times.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;the free and fast flow of information enables decentralization&lt;p&gt;i was a believer.  big time.  starting in 99, was helping democratize telecom via VoIP.  ate up long tail theory like candy.&lt;p&gt;but now i think we were incorrect in thinking the problem was only on the supply side - the monopolies (of that day) control of the supply side.  that was a problem, but there are two sides of the hose.&lt;p&gt;the other side of the hose is us.  24 hours in a day. 1440 minutes. minutes increasingly bombarded as the supply side of the hose has widened, and the hose now lives in our pockets instead of on a piece of furniture.&lt;p&gt;i still believe decentralization will occur - simply because things do usually balance over time (or at least the pendulum moves back and forth) - but won&amp;#x27;t it take more than &amp;#x27;fixing&amp;#x27; the supply side?</text></comment>
<story><title>Building a subsea cable to better connect Africa</title><url>https://engineering.fb.com/connectivity/2africa/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bcaa7f3a8bbc</author><text>Note to other readers: It requires 2 hours to read.&lt;p&gt;This is a timeless classic from Wired, written by Neal Stephenson in 1996. I love this article not only because of the article itself, but its enthusiasm and energy from the age it was written in. It was an age with a bright future where everything seems possible. Back at that time, Wired represented the avant-garde of Silicon Valley (including the fact that Neal Stephenson being the author) that was going to revolutionize everything through computing and the Internet, the free and fast flow of information enables decentralization, and would liberate us from all the old forms of political control.&lt;p&gt;In particular, this article had a clear techno-libertarian overtone, about how authoritarianism and monopoly would be defeated through disruptive innovation. One goal of constructing FLAG (the cable) was explicitly to reduce the reliance of the infrastructure of the United States and to challenge the role played by traditional ISP over the control. The article even mentioned the early cypherpunk movement (in the mid of the first Crypto War), and acknowledged &amp;quot;Virtually all communications between countries take place through a very small number of bottlenecks, and the available bandwidth simply isn&amp;#x27;t that great. Even outfits like FLAG don&amp;#x27;t really grok the Internet.&amp;quot; But FLAG was still seen as a step moving towards the correct direction and the beginning of the new network order.&lt;p&gt;The dream eventually came to an end. Wired-inspired DotCom bubble busted. Although FLAG was the first move to break U.S. and traditional ISP&amp;#x27;s monopoly, future projects in the next 10 years didn&amp;#x27;t quite accomplish this goal. Silicon Valley became the new giant establishment and monopoly (the critics say massive deregulation was partially responsible). Authoritarian regimes have done a good job preventing the information flowing online to bring liberal political changes. And the Internet has been seized as the means of mass surveillance.&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, the late 90s was a great age to be alive with that dream.</text></item><item><author>supernova87a</author><text>This doesn&amp;#x27;t directly have to do with this article, but in case some people have not seen it before:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wired.com&amp;#x2F;1996&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;ffglass&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wired.com&amp;#x2F;1996&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;ffglass&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; &amp;quot;Mother Earth Mother Board&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This is a good hour-long read, one of the most interesting descriptions I ever read of all that goes into funding, building, operating subsea fiber optic cables that connect us around the world.  It&amp;#x27;s a couple years out of date, but very entertaining.  Goes from the physics of transmission all the way to the ships and people who lay the cable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>andrepd</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; the free and fast flow of information enables decentralization, and would liberate us from all the old forms of political control.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it turned out precisely the opposite.</text></comment>