In order for us to understand how we can create our own forms of communication that are separate from corporations and governments, let’s do a review of how the internet works.
To do that we start off deep in the ocean.
The internet as we know it is a set of submarine cables. This is a map showing the world where different continents are connected with different cables. Here’s a close-up.
Submarine cables going between and within continents. Here’s one of those cables at the bottom of the ocean. A lot of the time, they’ll need maintenance because coral might grow on them, an anchor might pull and fracture them, and sometimes sharks have been known to chew on them. They need maintenance because they are physical cables.
There are multiple layers to those cables. That starts off with fiber optics, then it goes on to many protective layers and conductive layers. A ship like this with a giant roll of cable will go through and carefully drop it to the bottom of the ocean, and you’ll see here at the bottom, the cable going and sitting on the ocean bed.
At either end of the submarine cables then you have access points, these dots here where usually it’s coastal land. At those access points, the submarine cables come up and are connected.
Who owns those cables? It’s mostly telecommunication companies with collaboration between public, private, and government. Most entities including a lot of our internet service providers (ISPs) buy or lease from these major telecommunications companies who own these submarine cables.
Despite all of those cables, only 65% of the world’s population has internet access. Because of imperialism and capitalism, you can imagine how that distribution and weight work, who has it and who doesn’t. Companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta have laid down their own submarine cable so they have full control and own them.
Those submarine cables then get fed into distribution frameworks, which spread and branch them all over the world. And you usually get access to your internet service provider because your internet service provider gets access through those large distribution networks.
So in order for the internet to get to your house, it has to go through all of that. And of course, it’s made wireless after that through routers and radio frequencies.
So through that whole journey of the internet, think about how we could have our own control away from corporations and governments. Out of the many steps there, one of the most accessible for us to actually be able to have our own control is to do away with the ISP. And this is where we’re seeing more local communities and neighborhoods band together to create their own internet or mesh networks. And we can communicate through means that are not the internet. And that is where we can empower ourselves. Okay, clearly this is a series.
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