Bloom's Day

Completely random thoughts about a wide array of subjects

The great, LONG Wired piece by Neal Stephenson about stringing the world with undersea telephone/data cables from 2005

Who knew that a 10,000-word journalism piece by a science fiction writer about the history of laying undersea cables, from the 19th Century to 2005, could be such a rollicking, entertaining and fascinating read? But Neal Stephenson, one of my favorite writers of not-strictly-factual yarns, found a great story in an unlikely place, and dressed it up in amusingly neo-Victorian prose. Just saw this on Tumblr and had to repost. One of my favorite long reads ever. 

tetw:

Mother Earth Mother Board

By Neal Stephenson

In which the hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents. An account of the laying of the longest wire on Earth.

  1. claro3 reblogged this from tetw
  2. murmursofearth reblogged this from tetw and added:
    greatest Wired story ever.
  3. toupeeproofbullets reblogged this from poptech
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  9. beenposh reblogged this from poptech and added:
    Ahh, meatspace!
  10. listless reblogged this from poptech
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  13. poptech reblogged this from tetw and added:
    By Neal Stephenson In which the hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three...
  14. dbloom reblogged this from tetw and added:
    Who knew that a 10,000-word journalism piece by a science fiction writer about...history...
  15. tetw reblogged this from tetw and added:
    By Neal Stephenson In which the hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three...
  16. theworstideas reblogged this from tetw and added:
    awesome.
  17. tetw posted this