Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet is a deep dive compilation of how the internet was born and what is in reality. During the first two chapters, the author takes the reader into the history of the internet and how it began from historical physical places to its first electronic processor. To start, he takes readers on a journey to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he tells us the story of how mills and factories would churn out large amounts of steel and other raw materials to ship worldwide. These materials also included other precious materials such as copper that was used in making boats, roads, trains, and so on and so fourth which was the beginning of the industrial revolution. The analogy of tubes is used in terms of many long cylinders of materials being shipped around the world for use which later on can be used in the rise of the internet and its inception. Of course, what is most interesting here is that no even new where the internet began or whether it had a beginning at all. No one knew at the time of the internet’s birth which came first the chicken or the egg. Further more, he takes the reader further to find where this thing started if it even had a starting point. During the beginning of his discovery, Bloom went to the university where the internet really got its first home at UCLA.
This first networking device called the information messaging processor which was the first of its kind to begin the process of building a connected field of connections that we utilize today. This unit was the first device of its kind that people could get information to and from in a much more slow but effective way in contrast to today’s instant data traffic. Finally, the author has found some place where our internet was born before it was made public. Once such a device was installed, the internet itself in those days was given the opportunity to be noticed amongst its first geeks, and it started to create the connections necessary for its later developments as time passed. How is it then that a map as the first chapter suggests fit into all of this mess of things. From my observations, this map of electronic information is a navigation analogy that would guide me the reader on the paths that early internet and the internet of today could take me no matter where I went online. Those long tubes of raw materials that were once used for building physical places that could be linked together by physical maps are now transformed into a digital space. Such discoveries which include the many paths of the internet like its home in California and the connections it has made from there has given me a better sense of how this invisible facet of my life has come to be from a physical perspective unknown to the majority.
Relevant Sources
