Andrew Blum at TED: What is the Internet, Really?

As a journalist covering architecture, Andrew Blum knew about physical places and spaces and making sense of them. One day when a squirrel nibbled on his Internet cable, the curious writer began a journey to find where the Internet lives - physically. He wanted to discover the reality of what lies behind the computer and smartphone screen. In this video, he describes his quest that resulted in his book, "Tubes." Taking inspiration from Neal Stephenson who said, "Wired people should know something about wires," Blum visited the places where the Internet exists in physical form: large data centers, network connection hubs such as 60 Hudson Street in New York city and undersea cables that connect continents. The video runs almost 12 minutes. Also, see our story with Blum about his book, Q&A: Andrew Blum on the ‘Tubes’ Powering the Internet.

For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.