Andrew Blum: What is the Internet, really?

Summary

Architect Andrew Blum argues that modern life has shifted attention away from the physical world and into screens. Drawing from his own experience—especially after he became consistently “online” following the introduction of the iPhone (post-2007)—he says people’s attention is constantly divided between the screen and the surrounding world. In this framing, the Internet feels less like a place with substance and more like an abstract “Milky Way.”

Turning an “Internet break” into a physical reality

Blum uses a moment when his Internet connection fails to challenge that sense of abstraction. When a technician traces the connection and discovers a squirrel has chewed through the cable, the Internet suddenly becomes undeniably physical.

This leads to a central question: Is the Internet actually “out there” as a visitable place? Blum answers yes—especially by examining the real-world infrastructure that makes connectivity possible. Over roughly two years, he “visits” that infrastructure, focusing on key physical sites where networks interconnect and where undersea cables come ashore.

The Internet depends on physical infrastructure

Blum emphasizes that Internet connectivity is not just software or “the cloud.” It relies on highly physical processes and locations, including major data centers (for example, 60 Hudson Street in New York) that function as unusually dense interconnection hubs.

He argues that inter-network connections typically pass through tangible systems—such as fiber optic cables and routers—so the global Internet is best understood as an intensely physical web.

Undersea Cables: Blum’s main focus

Blum dedicates special attention to undersea cables and highlights several key points:

• Why global connectivity exists: The Internet works like a “global village” largely because cables span oceans.
• Scale and components: Fibers carry light signals across thousands of miles, with amplification at intervals on the ocean floor. Cables contain multiple fibers and multiple wavelength channels.
• How connectivity expands: Countries increasingly add additional cable routes after realizing that one connection is not enough, because failures require difficult, hands-on repair operations at sea.

A real build: WACS (West Africa Cable System)

To demonstrate the Internet’s real-world continuity, Blum recounts a specific cable build he follows through a telepresence relationship. He learns from Simon Cooper (working with Tata Communications) about the construction of the West Africa Cable System (WACS).

Blum describes engineers and workers performing physical, step-by-step operations:

• deploying a messenger line from land to sea,
• pulling the cable from a specialized landing ship,
• cutting away buoys as the cable sinks to the seabed,
• and then, on land, matching and fusing hair-thin fibers with careful, “jeweler-like” precision.

Despite its sophistication, Blum stresses that the work resembles older industrial practices. It involves recognizable port cities and labor cultures, suggesting continuity with longstanding physical industries rather than pure abstraction.

Closing argument: beyond “the cloud”

Blum argues that society talks too much about “the cloud,” which he describes as a distancing mechanism. When we treat technology as cloud-based, he suggests, we feel less responsibility to understand and maintain it.

He closes by invoking Neal Stephenson’s idea that “wired people should know something about wires.” In other words, people should know where the Internet comes from and what physically connects them.

Presenters / Contributors (credited in subtitles)

• Andrew Blum
• Joseph Geni (Translator)
• Morton Bast (Reviewer)