Over the last decade, internet has rapidly submerged into our life and it is expanding its reach everyday. It has bridged the gap among humans. To connect to someone at the other end of the world, all you need are a few clicks. But very few of us pause for a second and think that how is it all practically accomplished. To present the visualizations of how the information highways of the internet are connected, a group consisting of a reporter, a graphics designer and a data company joined hands. And, they have now published a map of the internet.

If it is of some compensation to the Congress fellows who once said that internets are tubes, the whole network of fiber optics spanning the world does look like tubes on a visual representation. But that’s like simplifying it too much.

To create this visual representation, Fortune Magazine’s writer, Andrew Blum joined hands with graphic designer Nicolas Rapp and the telecom data company, GeoTel communications. Since GeoTel itself is actively involved in laying down the relevant infrastructure, it has all the relevant data.

As a result of this collaboration, Blum wrote an article for Fortune. It was titled ‘Mapping The Internet.’ The article includes images showing how the fiber optics is laid across the world, under the oceans, and within the main metropolis and economic hubs.

According to the CEO of GeoTel Communications, Dave Drazen, “Most people have no clue what the world’s communication infrastructure looks like. When they open this [article] up, they’re astonished. You’re actually mapping the Internet right here. [GeoTel is] granular down to the street corner. But we really have to be sensitive that it’s a worldwide publication, that we’re secure in what we’re putting out there.”

The visual graphics are quite stunning because they show how much effort and resources have gone into making the world as connected as it is today.

However, the mapping is not the complete representation of the internet. It is just a visualization of the information highways ways or undersea fiber optic lines connecting continents, and a nice visualization. But, you must also understand that the internet is much more than that.

Source: Fortune

Courtesy: Mashable