In chapter 3 of "Tubes" Blum talks about two very important players in the establishment of connectivity in the Internet. Eric Troyer and Jay Adelson. Adelson founded Equinix which is a company that works to give power to data centers, and Troyer who works for the successful company. The three of them walked around the PAIX and could physically see the evolution of the internet and its connectivity developing through out the years. Blum refers to the "network effect" which refers to the phenomenon that something will become more useful the more that people use it and that is just what happened with this company. As more and more large Internet providers moved into the building the more wanted to be there. Another interesting the company faced in its early years was managing all of the cables. This is an issue I have always been a little curious about because if there is a problem with my internet how would someone know exactly what cable needs to be checked? How often do these cables need to be replaced or have diagnostics run on them? As PAIX became a pioneer in figure out ways around this issue they needed to expand and fast.
In chapter 4 Blum talked more about personal interactions with the internet and how they affect our lives. He talked more about the philosophical aspect that the internet presents in our usage. While I appreciated this point of view it was very reoccurring and felt forced at times. In this chapter he talked more about the development of the Internet that we know now and again some of the terminology went over my head.
My questions after reading this chapter are:
1. Will there ever be a time where all of the service providers merge into one? Are we over complicating things by having all of these different companies and making things more expensive then they need to be?
2. Will there ever be a time that everything will be wireless? Will there be a time where we don't even need the "tubes"?
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