A volcanic eruption severed communications in Tonga. The reason lay deep under the sea.
Berkeley News highlights the work of Nicole Starosielski and her students in building awareness of the hidden, yet essential, infrastructure of our communications network.
From the article:
The internet is kind of like drinking water, says UC Berkeley Professor Nicole Starosielski. Most of us don’t think much about how it’s delivered to our houses or wherever we need it, until we can’t get it.
But Starosielski, who joined the Department of Film and Media in the fall, thinks about it all the time. And she’s made it a priority to help people learn about and visualize the internet — a communication system that has become essential to our everyday lives.
Unlike drinking water, she says, "the internet transforms our experience of space and time. So many people depend on it, and we need to know about how it works."
Berkeley News talked with Starosielski about how the backbone of the global internet is made up of close to a million miles of telecommunication cables laying on the bottom of the ocean and why we need the arts and humanities to make visible this invisible infrastructure.