Listen to Odd Lots on Apple Podcasts Listen to Odd Lots on Spotify Watch Odd Lots on YouTube Subscribe to the newsletter In 2006, then-Senator Ted Stevens coined an infamous term for how to understand the internet: It's a "series of tubes." The funny thing is, that's a fairly accurate description. Underneath the world's oceans, miles and miles of fiber-optic cables send packets of information from one location to the next, serving as the backbone of the internet as know it. This infrastructure is delicate, too: Memorably, a 2022 volcanic eruption cut off the island of Tonga from web access for an extended period of time. Journalist Samanth Subramanian is the author of The Web Beneath the Waves: The Fragile Cables That Connect Our World , a book that explains , in detail, that the internet is not, and has never been, truly weightless or wireless. In fact, the system in place right now is pretty old school and resembles the telegraph cable network of yore.…