The Undersea Network

By: Nicole Starosielski

Narrated by: David H. Lawrence XVII

In our "wireless" world it is easy to take the importance of the undersea cable systems for granted, but the stakes of their successful operation are huge, as they are responsible for carrying almost all transoceanic Internet traffic. In The Undersea Network, Nicole Starosielski follows these cables from the ocean depths to their landing zones on the sandy beaches of the South Pacific, bringing them to the surface of media scholarship and making visible the materiality of the wired network. In doing so, she documents the cable network's cultural, historical, geographic, and environmental dimensions. Starosielski argues that the environments the cables occupy are historical and political realms, where the network and the connections it enables are made possible by the deliberate negotiation and manipulation of technology, culture, politics and geography. Accompanying the book is an interactive digital mapping project, where listeners can trace cable routes and hear stories about the island cable hubs.

©2015 Duke University Press (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

A Series of Tubes, Indeed

A fascinating look at international undersea cable system; what it is, how it works, how we use it, and all the various political and colonial problems the physical locations affect. It's an overview that's well worth the time.

I was surprised to learn just how entrenched in the geopolitical world the Internet really is. One assumes that communications are broadly disbursed, but this book maps the rural physical networks that global communication depends on.

Historically reliant, they reflect cultural history. For example, the two locations where cables, the source of all internet communication, come ashore in New Zealand are in the same locations used by colonial explorers and their successors since the eighteenth century. The future of global communication will continue to depend on political fault lines.

Narrator David H. Lawrence XVII is clear and engaging, keeping a huge amount of information distinct.

No technical content, no compelling story

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

The book is written like a conference paper and the author shows absolutely no talent for making or telling an interesting story about the topic. The book is a mishmash of facts and analyzes with a structure that is extremely hard to follow (I will assume there was a structure , and that I just wasn't able to follow it; maybe the audiobook format is inappropriate for this kind of book).Moreover, the description is misleading. The author spends no time discussing any of the technical aspects of undersea cable communications (which could fill in several books by themselves). I should have checked her bio, she's into human sciences, not engineering.

Fairly low level of factually. A lot of emotions

I was captivated by the title of this book and probably had too high of expectations, so I was very disappointed. The book is not well researched and the statements offered in It are not well substantiated by engineering data. Most of the information is assessed through the lenses of equality for people, completely disregarding the fact that equality works differently for technology. For example, it is irrelevant for a human if a landing station is 30-40 miles from a major population point because the signal travels under 2ms so people do really care. Even more, for technology this means cheaper service which ultimately helps the people and offers lower price.
Overall, activism has blinded the author to the pint she is unable to see how she is arguing against the pints she is trying to promote.