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TRANSCRIPT: TAI ASKS WHY - INTERNET

Tai Poole: Congratulations! [clapping] If you are listening to this podcast, chances are you have an internet connection. OK, OK. I know it doesn't feel like a big achievement and we can't even remember life before Wi-Fi, but my parents told me when they were young they had something called dial-up internet where you'd have to use a phone line [Clip of phone dialling] to get a connection. Who even uses phone lines anymore? What is that? And it made this beepy, crunchy sound. It was like - [Clip of dial-up internet sound] Oh, and even when you did get on, you could only see really basic web pages and it would take an hour to send an email. My parents are from the Stone Ages from what I've gathered.

Tai Poole: As you can tell, a lot has changed since then. Now we have Wi-Fi, we store things in the cloud, and I can send a picture to my family on the other side of the world in seconds. It's just bam, [snaps fingers] sent. It's magic. But I don’t really understand how information travels from my phone all the way to my cousin’s phone in Australia. I’m literally more than 10,000 miles away, but a picture could get there in seconds! How does it do that so quickly? I know that the router in my house gives me an internet connection, but after the picture leaves my phone, I have no idea where it goes! Does it go in the air around us? In space? Magic pigeons? I store a lot of my stuff in the cloud, so is that actually a cloud? I use the internet every day to do homework, have fun, and talk to friends. So, shouldn’t I know more about it? Where is the internet?

[Clip of “Tai Asks Why Theme Music” by Johnny Spence]

Tai Poole: I'm Tai and this is my podcast, Tai Asks Why. There are so many good questions out there that you really want to have answered. Is it possible to predict the future? How do I know what’s true on the internet? Why are viruses so good at what they do? What’s the deal with screen time? How else can we power the planet? And where is the internet?

Tai Poole: I asked my little bro Kien where he thinks these interwebs are.

Sound Clip: [Kien Poole] I don't think the internet has a specific place. I know that the internet isn't a building. The internet is like these invisible wires that connect to real wires. And then you can like control it and make passwords. You can buy fast internet or slow internet. The internet can go down. It's not completely stable, but it's just kind of this invisible system. It's like the ground. There's little worms going through the ground, except instead of worms being here and there, worms would be everywhere. The internet just is stuff that we don't notice. But it's just everywhere.

Tai Poole: Mmm, I’m not sure that the internet is like worms, and the thought of worms being everywhere kind of makes me a little uncomfortable. But Kien does have a good point. The internet feels very invisible. We really don’t notice where it is or how it works, unless of course, it goes down. And it feels weird that I don’t know very much about this thing I use every day.

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] Well, there's no reason for the people who build the internet to publicize where the internet is.

Tai Poole: That’s Nicole Starosielski. She’s an associate professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Nicole studies the invisible parts that keep the internet running.

And she told me, for the most part, the internet doesn’t actually travel through thin air.

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] It's under the ocean.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Wait what?

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] Actually, it's on the very bottom of the ocean in a bunch of garden hoses. Also, it's underground. And sometimes it's in, like, large warehouses.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] I'm sorry. It's in the ocean?

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] Yeah. It's in the ocean.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] I was pretty sure that the cloud didn't literally mean a lot of boxes in the sky, but…

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] No. It's all lies. It's not in the air.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Why would they call it the cloud if it's in the ocean?

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] Well, because they want you to think it's in the air. So when all those companies are marketing to you saying like, "Hey, pay me 50 bucks or 100 bucks for your internet, they're not going to give you images of rocks or warehouses or things underground or the ocean. Because you don’t want to spend $50 to throw all your signals into the ocean. You want to spend $50 to be liberated from all the things that are around you. You want to imagine that the internet is everywhere and like kind of touches you like a cloud and then runs and touches somebody else. So, it's a really great idea, but it has nothing to do with where it actually is.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] So, if I send my cousin up in Australia a funny photo of me and my little brother that I just took, how does it get to them? Like, how does it get from Toronto all the way to Australia if it's not in the clouds?

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] Let's say you take it on your phone. Usually what would happen is it would go to like a cell phone tower. And from there it would link into a terrestrial underground cable grid. And so, it would travel on these small fibre optic glass cables to some place called a network exchange, which is basically like a train station. It's like a train station for internet signals. So, your really funny photo would go to this, like, train station for internet signals. And it would take another train until it got to the West Coast. So it would travel all the way across underground, you know, Canada into the US. And then from there, it might get on the Southern Cross Cable Network. And it would go to a cable landing point, which is basically like a port for your funny photo. And it would get on a undersea cable, and it would go on the very bottom of the ocean. And then it would like, come up at Hawaii or maybe it would come up at Fiji - which are some stopping points on that cable route - before going to Sydney. And then it would link to an underground network, go to another set of, you know, internet train stations, and then it would eventually jump from a cell tower to your cousin's phone. [Clip of text notification sound] But only those last two points are likely in the air. The rest of it would all be on the bottom of the ocean or in these, like, exchanges, or underground.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] That's, I mean, that's wild. It's crazy to think that, you know, like you can make this whole movie of how this little tiny packet of information goes all the way through this subway under Canada and then, like, in the ocean - at the bottom of the ocean bed - all the way to Australia.

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] Yeah. And every single time you send a photo, that happens, like over and over. So, it's just like a trip that keeps happening [Clip of text notification sound] and millions of people are doing this at the same time. [Clip of multiple, quick text notification sounds] Like, millions of people's photos are travelling on the same cable, on the same subway under the Earth, under the ocean, all at once.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] So, I'm guessing that the cables are like, you know, they're under the water, so you don't really get to see them. But they're like massive, so they just could have a lot of bandwidth and they could send a lot of things at once.

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] No! No, they're super small. They're literally the size of a garden hose.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] What? Then how would you, like, send like three photos at a time? There'd be this, like, huge traffic jam, like halfway in the Atlantic.

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] So within that garden hose, there are these thin fibres. And these fibres are super, super, super pure glass. And what they're doing is they break your photo down into these little, like, light signals. And the way they do it is it’s like, it's kind of like a wave, right, so you can send multiples at the same time as long as they don't interfere with one another. And so, you could send just tons of information.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] So, then I'm guessing it just kind of like, you know, gets my image, gets the funky image with the funny filter. It breaks it down into a bunch of light signals and then [makes beeping noises] it just sends this array of light that's like, oh, well, this is what the image is.

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] Exactly. That's kind of like what happens.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] So, if these tubes are so thin, I mean, there's still a lot of people sending messages to each other. So, is there like this crazy spider web of them below the world?

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] Well, yes, but not as many as you would think. There's something like 400 cable systems - a little over 400 cable systems - that carry all of the global internet.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Wait, what?

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] So, everybody - everybody in the whole world communicating across oceans does so on around 400-ish systems.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] That's ridiculous. There's like four million people in Toronto - that, how would you do that in garden hoses?

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] Well, they can just cram a whole lot of information into a garden hose these days. It's light going through glass. And so if you think about, like, when you turn on the light in a room, how does it instantly fill the room with brightness as fast as light goes. Right. So, it's like turning on a light that sends signals all across the world.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Hello. I think you cut out. The internet went down again.

Tai Poole: During this call, the garden hoses actually showed us how finicky they are, and that they mess up all the time.

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] I think we - I think we lost connection.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Sorry. I've just - our internet went out for a second.

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] See, the cables. Our signal got dropped somewhere underground.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] The cables, man. So, that actually gives me an interesting question. You know, you don't want things pulling and tugging. You don't want the cables to shift, right. What happens if you got like a shark or a fish that just wanted to be very anarchist and just, you know, tug the cable or try to chew the cable?

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] So, that did happen way back in the 1980s when they first started with fibre optic cables. There was a case where a shark bit a cable because the cable was admitting a frequency that the shark like, was attracted to. But since then, they insulate it, so there's no – you know, I know there're still anarchist sharks, but they have other targets right now. Like, cables are just really not an interesting target.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] It's just a very odd-looking rock.

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] Yeah, exactly. Very long, extended rock.

Tai Poole: It’s so cool that these thin cables gets our stuff where it needs to be, literally, at the speed of light! And underwater! I didn’t even know they existed until I talked to Nicole. So, I really wanted to go take a look at one of them. I don’t live by the ocean, but I found out there’s actually an underwater cable right here in Toronto. It starts from a beach, goes straight through Lake Ontario to New York State, which is where Nicole is.

Tai Poole: Crosslake Fibre, the company who laid the cable, gave me an address, and I headed over to the beach. But, when I got there, there really wasn’t much to look at. [Clip of beach sounds, seagulls]

"Oh, come on. Where is it? No, that's just a stick. If I were a very long garden hose, where would I be hiding? Come on, I've been searching for like 30 seconds. Show me the fibre." Turns out, the cable was actually hidden under a manhole. It was just a boring, old, beige manhole. [makes sad trombone sounds] Not sure what I was expecting to find. I mean, the cables need to be protected from people stepping on them or whatever, but I was hoping to see something. I just can’t get over this idea that something so big and powerful is almost completely invisible to us. Because, when something's invisible, it's harder to figure it out or ask the right questions about it.

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] The problem is, is that if you don't know where your internet is, you don't know where it's going, right. And you don't know who has control over it.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Nicole also pointed out that once you see where the not-so-invisible internet travels, you also see that not everyone has access to it.

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] There are a lot of areas where, you know, you don't necessarily have a huge fibre pipe. And so, like, a lot of more sort of remote rural areas are often, sort of, underserved by fibre optic cable systems, as are islands. And so for that reason, people have been launching these satellite networks to try to get the fringe areas that are not on the fibre grid.

Tai Poole: It takes a lot of time and money to put up cell towers and lay down garden hoses in the ocean. And the world’s not a super fair place. So, some places get more investment than others. Only half of the world’s population is online. And experts say that the internet won’t become universal until 2050! That's like 30 years away. That's so crazy. But engineers are thinking of new ways to bring it to people every day. Like those satellite networks Nicole mentioned or even weirder stuff. When I did a little digging online, I found a company called Loon, and they actually use flying balloons to give people an internet connection in remote areas. Isn’t that awesome? But, apparently, those aren’t the only places that really need fast connections.

Tai Poole: Sometimes even people in big cities don't have affordable internet access. Actually, in the US, more disconnected families are living in cities, not rural areas. I had no idea, but this is actually happening here in Canada too. In certain cities, internet speed can be different neighbourhood to neighbourhood. And there are even areas called 'dead zones' where high-speed just isn’t available at all. Isn’t that kind of shocking? Why can’t everyone get affordable, fast internet? Shouldn’t someone do something about it?

Sound Clip: [Janice Gates] It shouldn't matter where you live. It shouldn't matter what race you are. You should be able to have access to this tool that allows you to participate, you know, in the world.

Tai Poole: That’s Janice Gates. She’s the director of the Equitable Internet Initiative in Detroit. And they’re doing something about the lack of internet in their communities.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] So in this episode, I'm asking the question, where is the internet? So, where is the internet for you?

Sound Clip: [Janice Gates] Well, in the city of Detroit, it's primarily in midtown and downtown. Those are the neighborhoods in this city that have high-speed access and they have affordable access.

Tai Poole: But that’s not the case for the other neighbourhoods in Detroit and Janice explained why.

Sound Clip: [Janice Gates] You know, you can't look at the lack of internet access without also looking at race. So, Detroit is a majority Black city. And I don't think that it should be surprising to anyone that the neighbourhoods that have majority Black and brown populations have the least access to internet. Your neighbourhood just doesn't see the investment that they should.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] That's quite sad, honestly. That's a bummer, you know. That just sucks.

Sound Clip: [Janice Gates] Yeah, it does. If you don't have the internet, you can't really, you know, socialize with your friends. I mean, if you have a phone, then you're lucky. But if you want to use social media and you don't have the internet, then you can't do that. If you're an adult, that could affect your ability to apply for jobs. You can't find, you know, city resources. So, the transportation or the bus schedules. So, if your family was in need of food, you wouldn't be able to find, like, where there are food pantries. And you can't, you know, there's a lot of shopping online now. So, you get left out of, basically, being able to participate in the economy.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Yeah. That kind of seems like a cycle, you know. You don't have internet. You can't get access and opportunities to jobs in places like that. So you won't get support.

Sound Clip: [Janice Gates] Exactly. Yes. You're absolutely right that it is a cycle. And one of the overarching things that it does is it leaves a lot of people in poverty.

Tai Poole: So what the Equitable Internet Initiative is trying to do is break this cycle by bringing the internet to people that have not been able to afford it. And their solution doesn’t rely on super-fancy engineering. Instead, it’s actually really simple.

Sound Clip: [Janice Gates] Honestly, the first way that we start is by talking to them, you know, which is not a thing that, you know, other internet service providers do. We believe in building with the community. So, we want them to be involved in the decision making of their internet.

Tai Poole: The whole network is based around the work of people called 'digital stewards.' These are people who live in the neighbourhoods and are committed to helping out.

Sound Clip: [Janice Gates] So, the first thing they did was they went and surveyed their neighbourhoods. So, they went out to see, you know, door by door, who had internet access and who did not. Then they were able to use Google Earth, to map out, how do we get this signal from that tower building, the Renaissance Center, which is the tallest building in Detroit. It's where all of our connections come from. How do we get the signal from that tall building to one of the other tall buildings in each of the neighbourhoods. So, once they figured that out, you know, they put equipment on each of those buildings. And then from there, they had to go back and work with residents and then people who owned businesses in the neighbourhood to then get that internet signal to the different homes in the neighbourhood.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] So, how is it different than the internet that I use, if it is?

Sound Clip: [Janice Gates] We call it point to point access. Most internet, you know, is distributed, you know, think about a spider web. With point to point, it's literally from tall building to smaller building. So, it's really important. We call it 'line of sight.' So, you should be able to see, like, from one tall building to a smaller building and then to the individual homes. It's not as high-speed as other internet that you have, but it still allows you to get online.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] So, does this community internet network - is the internet cheaper?

Sound Clip: [Janice Gates] Yes. So, we kind of use a sliding scale. And that just means it depends on really what the people can afford. So, in some cases, you know, depending on the family and their individual circumstance, they don't pay at all. Other families pay about $10. Other families, sometimes they pay 20.

Tai Poole: Wow! I never thought it would be possible to just pay what you can for internet service. Like, if you were to lose your job, you wouldn't be able to tell your internet service provider, "Sorry. I can only pay half this month." They would probably just cut your internet off. But because this is run by the community, they make it cheap and actually care if you can afford it. So nice. And making the internet cheaper isn’t the only thing the project does. The digital stewards actively help the residents. They don’t just set it up and leave it there.

Sound Clip: [Janice Gates] They’re really important, right, because not only do they build the network, they host trainings. So, they will teach people, you know, how to set up an email address. They'll go over, like, how to use a computer in general, how to set up a social media account. And then kind of teaching them about how to make their data secure, you know, when they're just surfing the web. So the digital stewards are - they're really important. And we make sure that the stewards that we hire come from the neighbourhood that they work in.

Tai Poole: So, the stewards are not only giving the people an internet connection to use, they’re teaching them how to use it and how to protect themselves and just have fun with it. It’s not, like, cold and impersonal, where you get an internet bill, you pay it every month and that’s it. This thing they built, you could have people you could keep going to if you don’t know how to use your email or you can’t afford to pay that month. Because the internet isn’t just a connection, it’s also the people that use it and the people who build it, you know?

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] What was your reaction, like, your personal reaction once all this started to be up and running? How did it feel?

Sound Clip: [Janice Gates] Oh, my goodness. I don't cry a whole lot in public, but it really makes me cry, and it makes me really proud they're no longer disadvantaged. We call that equity. That's why we call it the Equitable Internet Initiative. You know, bringing the internet to them and allowing them to be part of the process, I think, really just allows them to engage as a full citizen.

Tai Poole: When I started this journey, I thought of the internet as this invisible, effortless thing. My computer was automatically connected to Wi-Fi, and I didn’t even have to think about it. But now I know it’s not limitless at all. It’s actually a huge privilege to have an easy access to it. I keep thinking back to that boring manhole near the beach. It kind of feels like the perfect metaphor for this whole thing. Like, it’s literally keeping a lid on the truth of the internet. That it’s not this magic cloud, but a bunch of underwater cables and low flying satellites and balloons and community networks. It’s a really real physical thing built by real people. And Nicole pointed out it needs to be maintained by people too.

Sound Clip: [Nicole Starosielski] The internet depends on so many people. Like, it's not that you just throw a hose down and then it's done. You need the people on the ships who go pull it up and repair it. You need the people who are at the ports and the train stations of the internet to go upgrade it and make sure that it's functioning. So, there are actually all these people who are doing the work of keeping the internet alive right now.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Kien, I’ve returned with answers. I figured out where the internet is.

Sound Clip: [Kien Poole] Elaborate.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Did you know that the internet is actually just a big spider web of cables underwater?

Sound Clip: [Kien Poole] Wow!

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] They're actually the size of a garden hose.

Sound Clip: [Kien Poole] I don't know, I mean, how can the internet run through the little garden hose in the middle of the ocean? Because there's nothing giving it the signal out there.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Well, how I learned it works is that it's a bunch of these thin, little like, kind of like noodle strips that are glass. And then what it does is it sends these little bursts of light through the glass. And then the glass is so pure that the light just kind of can somehow manage a ping and go all the way to wherever it needs to go, which can be on the other side of the world.

Sound Clip: [Kien Poole] I feel like if you’re shooting a light from a glass tube in the ocean, that would be just so hard because it's so easy to miss or mistime it. Or your light could, like, just be faded out by like a fish or, like, the water. What happens if one of these like, breaks or something?

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] I don't know, man. Like, it's so weird to me that the internet is just a bunch of little, like, flashlight signals across the ocean.

Sound Clip: [Kien Poole] It seems so, like - it would like - it would stop working way too easily. It seems like it's just not enough.

Tai Poole: Yeah. I think Kien’s onto something here. Now that I know that the internet is this very real physical thing, it does seem more precarious and more precious. It’s not just magic from the sky, but it’s the accumulation of all kinds of people’s hard work. We made it, so we can break it. But we can also fix it. I don’t know about you, but the next time I send a funny meme to my cousin in Australia, I’m going to be thinking about that long and winding journey of a bolt of light travelling on glass in underwater cables, avoiding sharks and crabs along the way. But, I’m also going to try and remember all the people who helped make that happen and all the people it hasn’t happened for yet.

[Clip of “Tai Asks Why Theme Music” by Johnny Spence]

Tai Poole: Thank you guys so much for listening. I'm Tai Poole. This show was produced by Amanda Buckiewicz and Judy Ziyi Gu. Judy’s also our digital producer. This podcast was created by Veronica Simmonds, and she is also our editor and sound designer. The theme music is by Johnny Spence. Sound engineer is mon pere, Minh Nguyen, and our location manager is ma mere, Nicky Poole. Thanks guys for paying for the internet so I can make podcasts and send funny “may-mays.”

Today my guests were Nicole Starosielski and Janice Gates. The Equitable Internet Initiative is a project by the Detroit Community Technology Project. Our senior producer is Tina Verma and Executive Producer of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani. Until next time, I'm Tai, keep asking why.

Transcript: Tai Asks Why - Season 3: Where Is The Internet?

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