I just started reading this cool book called Tubes about the physical internet. It starts with a subject that is close to my heart since I am way more enamored with the physical than the cloud: the author going to a printshop in Milwakee to see a monster printing machine made in Germany print a map of the internet. I wish I could have seen that. The author was inspired to follow the "internet" one day when his modem stopped working because a squirrel chewed through the rubber coating of the wiring that brought the internet into his house.
For a few months now, Curtis and I have been experiencing intermittent problems with our internet connection. The darn thing keeps blinking in and out. We have called our internet provider several times; and I imagine that sometimes we actually speak to someone in America. But judging from the wonderful accent (and I'm not being ironic here, I love accents) of some of the people we have talked to, a lot of the time we get connected to "Jason" or "Kelly" in India, where parts of the physical internet look like this:
As an aside, I would much rather that the web technicians answering my calls tell me their names are Satish or Padmani, Mohandas or even Mohammed; but I digress...
Our calls and their solutions have yielded no results thus far. The answers the technicians have given us on the phone, because god forbid in this day and age they send a physical person, American or not, to diagnose our problem, has had to do with our filters or modem; all things we can change by buying new ones. I don't mind buying new equipment if the equipment is actually the problem; but I hate buying new stuff blindly if that is not going to solve the problem. It's a waste of... well, of everything: copper, plastic, energy, money, time... everything. As it is, the last technician we spoke to, an American woman called Marie, pinpointed our problems to our filters. After Curtis yelled at her on the phone, asked to talk to her supervisor, and finally handed the phone to me so I could talk to both women, I acquiesced to buying new filters. We changed the filters and "voila": nothing happened, we still have intermittent problems. At this point they want us to buy a new modem. And at that, I put my foot down and asked for a wire technician to come here and touch my physical internet before I buy anything else.
You see, last year at this time, our sewer line made in the 70's of tar impregnated paper finally gave up the ghost and we had to have the plumbers install a new, this time PVC, sewer line. And as we were inspecting our backyard to find out what the best way to lay the line was, we found our phone line; the one through which our internet connection also comes through.
Yesterday after talking to one more internet technician somewhere in the world, I braved my mosquito infested woods to go take a picture of my "tube", my very own little physical connection to the Big Cloud. A connection in a little woodland creature paradise, where everybody loves to gnaw on wires and plastic coating, that has looked like the pictures below and has been out there for more than a year through sweltering heat, freezing cold and an unusually rainy season.
I, personally, with no training whatsoever, think that maybe, just maybe, my connectivity problems might, just might, have something to do with the way the fiber optic tubes are coming into my house. Hey, I'm not ruling out the modem, mind you, but the following pictures give me pause. Forgive their quality as I was taking them while standing on a patch of poison ivy, in a hot and humid day, while being consumed by those little black and white mosquitos we inadvertently imported from Asia in water collecting in the wells of old tires being transported from there to here on some ship. Yes we are all very much connected...
Our calls and their solutions have yielded no results thus far. The answers the technicians have given us on the phone, because god forbid in this day and age they send a physical person, American or not, to diagnose our problem, has had to do with our filters or modem; all things we can change by buying new ones. I don't mind buying new equipment if the equipment is actually the problem; but I hate buying new stuff blindly if that is not going to solve the problem. It's a waste of... well, of everything: copper, plastic, energy, money, time... everything. As it is, the last technician we spoke to, an American woman called Marie, pinpointed our problems to our filters. After Curtis yelled at her on the phone, asked to talk to her supervisor, and finally handed the phone to me so I could talk to both women, I acquiesced to buying new filters. We changed the filters and "voila": nothing happened, we still have intermittent problems. At this point they want us to buy a new modem. And at that, I put my foot down and asked for a wire technician to come here and touch my physical internet before I buy anything else.
You see, last year at this time, our sewer line made in the 70's of tar impregnated paper finally gave up the ghost and we had to have the plumbers install a new, this time PVC, sewer line. And as we were inspecting our backyard to find out what the best way to lay the line was, we found our phone line; the one through which our internet connection also comes through.
Yesterday after talking to one more internet technician somewhere in the world, I braved my mosquito infested woods to go take a picture of my "tube", my very own little physical connection to the Big Cloud. A connection in a little woodland creature paradise, where everybody loves to gnaw on wires and plastic coating, that has looked like the pictures below and has been out there for more than a year through sweltering heat, freezing cold and an unusually rainy season.
I, personally, with no training whatsoever, think that maybe, just maybe, my connectivity problems might, just might, have something to do with the way the fiber optic tubes are coming into my house. Hey, I'm not ruling out the modem, mind you, but the following pictures give me pause. Forgive their quality as I was taking them while standing on a patch of poison ivy, in a hot and humid day, while being consumed by those little black and white mosquitos we inadvertently imported from Asia in water collecting in the wells of old tires being transported from there to here on some ship. Yes we are all very much connected...
1 is the phone company box
2 are the flags the technicians put out signifying something
3 is my favorite, I call it my "al fresco connection", close ups follow
The arrow points to the cable snaking around the tree and disappearing underground once more
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| first world country my ass |
