Popular understanding of the Internet’s physical reality has changed dramatically in the past half-decade, with consequences for privacy and security. Drawing on the research in his book, “Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet,” Blum will argue for a continued emphasis on the Internet’s real-world geography.
Andrew Blum is a journalist and the author of Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, the first book-length look at the physical heart of the Internet itself. Tubes was first published in June 2012 by Ecco/Harpercollins in the US and Viking/Penguin in the UK. It was a national bestseller, and met with wide acclaim from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Salon, The Guardian, The Economist, The Independent, Kirkus Reviews, Bookforum, Scientific American, New Scientist, Brain Pickings, Ars Technica, Science News and many others. Blum discussed Tubes with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air; BBC 4 presented it as a “Book of the Week”; and Blum spoke about his research on the stages of TED Global and the London School of Economics, among dozens of other venues. Design Observer named Tubes its 2012 “Book of the Year,” and London’s Independent called it “The year’s most stimulating and original ‘travel’ book.” When the Edward Snowden/NSA revelations made the Internet’s infrastructure a vital diplomatic question, journalists from Washington to London to Frankfurt to São Paulo relied on Tubes as a crucial reference. It has been translated into nine languages.
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