Tubes

A Journey to the Center of the Internet

By: Andrew Blum

Narrated by: Andrew Blum

When your Internet cable leaves your living room, where does it go? Almost everything about our day-to-day lives - and the broader scheme of human culture - can be found on the Internet. But what is it physically? And where is it really? Our mental map of the network is as blank as the map of the ocean that Columbus carried on his first Atlantic voyage. The Internet, its material nuts and bolts, is an unexplored territory. Until now.

In Tubes, journalist Andrew Blum goes inside the Internet's physical infrastructure and flips on the lights, revealing an utterly fresh look at the online world we think we know. It is a shockingly tactile realm of unmarked compounds, populated by a special caste of engineer who pieces together our networks by hand; where glass fibers pulse with light and creaky telegraph buildings, tortuously rewired, become communication hubs once again. From the room in Los Angeles where the Internet first flickered to life to the caverns beneath Manhattan where new fiber-optic cable is buried; from the coast of Portugal, where a 10,000 mile undersea cable just two thumbs wide connects Europe and Africa to the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, where Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have built monumental data centers, Blum chronicles the dramatic story of the Internet's development, explains how it all works, and takes the first-ever in-depth look inside its hidden monuments.

This is a book about real places on the map: their sounds and smells, their storied pasts, their physical details, and the people who live there. For all the talk of the "placelessness" of our digital age, the Internet is as fixed in real, physical spaces as the railroad or telephone. You can map it and touch it, and you can visit it. Is the Internet in fact "a series of tubes" as Ted Stevens, the late senator from Alaska, once famously described it? How can we know the Internet's possibilities if we don't know its parts?

Like Tracy Kidder's classic The Soul of a New Machine or Tom Vanderbilt's recent best seller Traffic, Tubes combines on-the-ground reporting and lucid explanation into an engaging, mind-bending narrative to help us understand the physical world that underlies our digital lives.

©2012 Andrew Blum (P)2012 HarperCollins Publishers

Humanity at the end of a tube!

Great narration by the author. The history, future, and human connection I did not expect from this book were the very best parts.

Maybe the internet is a bunch of tubes!

What did you love best about Tubes?

The book addresses the technical aspects of the internet without alienating those of us who don't have advanced degrees in computer science. It's a nice mix of technical and human interest, too. Maybe geeks are actually pretty normal people?!

Which scene was your favorite?

The author does a nice job of employing descriptive language as he describes the interiors of the few buildings in the world (data exchanges) that really are the hubs of the internet. The public will never be permitted in there, but after hearing this book, I had a pretty good picture in my mind of what they're like.

Any additional comments?

Author narrated books can be hit or miss. I think that Mr. Blum is an excellent writer and a good reader. Overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the subject matter.

rare insight into Internet & datacenters

rare insight into Internet & datacenters.
g r e a t b o o o k.

Interesting for a while

Would you try another book from Andrew Blum and/or Andrew Blum?

Probably not

Would you recommend Tubes to your friends? Why or why not?

Maybe

Would you listen to another book narrated by Andrew Blum?

Maybe

Was Tubes worth the listening time?

Not really.

Any additional comments?

This book was interesting to a degree but it failed to deliver the real meat of the story of the Internet and it got a little dull in certain parts of the book.

I Used to Work for Equinix

Would you consider the audio edition of Tubes to be better than the print version?

I've only experienced this title in audio, but it was easy to listen to and a good quick listen at that.

What did you like best about this story?

I was working at Equinix at the time, a company that is featured to a good degree in this book, and it was really cool to learn more about the history/current state of affairs when it comes to IT infrastructure.

Which character – as performed by Andrew Blum – was your favorite?

This is non-fiction, not really any characters to speak of

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

A documentary on what keeps us connected

Any additional comments?

I think it's important to have an understanding of this subject matter to at least some degree. This is a good primer.

Incredible journey

Comprehensive intelligent interesting. This is a must read for any young gifted person to understand what the internet is to help lay the groundwork for the next iteration and probably make billions. Should be a documentary. Fascinating.

Interesting and entertaining

Fun read if you want to increase your knowledge of the physical infrastructure that makes the internet work.

Excellent, well told, and perfectly paced

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

You will learn alot but not be buried with technology.

What did you like best about this story?

The pacing of the book, the pleasure of traveling the world with the author and narrator

What about Andrew Blum’s performance did you like?

Left like I was in the places he described.

Worthwhile book

Even though I work for an Internet Service Provider, there were aspects of the inner workings of the Internet that I didn't understand. This book shed some light on some of those grey areas. The book is not very technical in nature, though it can be slow at times. I would recommend the book for anyone who is curious about how one of the most important parts of modern society.

Great Insight

wonderful journey to one of the most familiar and unknown places in our world today.