Guys, before we go to break, there’s something very near and dear to my heart that WIRED wrote about this week. It’s something I love even more than biathlon. It is undersea internet cables.
Leah Feiger: I love when you talk about this. I think that the first time you brought this up to me was approximately one week into your tenure as executive editor, and you’re like, “Leah, do you know what I love?” and it’s undersea internet cables.
Brian Barrett: Yeah. I was like, “Number one, undersea internet cables. Number two, my children. Number three …” that was sort of the gist of it. That’s how I always introduce myself. I want to take everybody back to December 14th, 1988. The top movie in theaters is Twins starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.
Zoë Schiffer: Legitimately never heard of it.
Leah Feiger: Wait, Zoë. What?
Brian Barrett: What? Anyway, Arnold is agentic and Danny DeVito’s mimetic. The top song—
Zoë Schiffer: Now I get it.
Brian Barrett: —the top song is “Look Away” by Chicago. Now that, I also am not—I don’t remember that one at all. And the first undersea fiber optic cable connecting the United States, UK and France went live. This was the day that the internet went global, which is crazy—
Zoë Schiffer: That is crazy.
Brian Barrett: —that it was relatively recent. The reason we’re writing about it now is that that original cable, which is called TAT-8, is being pulled up. It’s out of commission. It’s old, it’s decrepit, so I identify, and it’s being pulled up and put out to pasture because the technology’s gotten better. But in this great feature that we published, it is a look at how this changed the world basically, and how we take for granted—but the reason I am so into undersea cable stories is because it’s so easy to forget that the internet is a physical thing and that the maintenance of those things is really what makes all this connectivity happen. So yeah, TAT-8. Any other fond memories of TAT-8? Or, no. What did you guys think reading this feature?
Zoë Schiffer: Well, famously we were not alive in 1988.
Leah Feiger: Yeah. Sorry, Brian. You’re older than us. Just a reminder.
Brian Barrett: Hurts.
Zoë Schiffer: But the part of this story that I wanted to talk about, which felt like a real intersection of both of your interests was the myth of the shark attacks.
Brian Barrett: Oh, yeah.
Leah Feiger: OK. So to back up a little bit, these cables, at the very beginning, when they were put in, Brian would be able to talk about this way more because he’s kind of a freak about cables if you haven’t realized already. These cables would sometimes have unexplained damage, and looking back on it years later, engineers figured out that this kind of happens, that if you are putting cables underseas, there will be wind, there will be changes, things will get moved around. Of course, there will be damages, but that is not how they felt at the time. These engineers assumed that it was sharks, that sharks were biting their cables, that they were destroying the internet. The cables were reinforced with all these protective layers, all of these things, because they were like, “Oh, my God, the sharks are quite literally ending all of this for us.” But this article goes into great detail of how they figured out it wasn’t the sharks, and by thinking that it was the sharks, it actually helped make all of this technology that much better and stronger, but the sharks were innocent, you guys. The sharks were innocent.
