They are the internet's hidden highways - bundles of optical fibres on the ocean floor carrying data between continents as pulses of light.
Humans have laid some 870,000 miles (1.4 million km) of them, "lacing the Earth tightly together", writes Samanth Subramanian in his new book The Web Beneath the Waves.
These cables carry about 99% of global communication traffic.
They are the internet's hidden highways - bundles of optical fibres on the ocean floor carrying data between continents as pulses of light. Humans have laid some 870,000 miles (1.4 million km) of them, "lacing the Earth tightly together", writes Samanth Subramanian in his new book The Web Beneath the Waves. These cables carry about 99% of global communication traffic.
