Link tags: cab
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The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat
A fascinating in-depth look at the maintenance of undersea cables:
The industry responsible for this crucial work traces its origins back far beyond the internet, past even the telephone, to the early days of telegraphy. It’s invisible, underappreciated, analog.
It’s a truism that people don’t think about infrastructure until it breaks, but they tend not to think about the fixing of it, either.
Naming things needn’t be hard - Classnames
A handy resource from Paul:
Find inspiration for naming things – be that HTML classes, CSS properties or JavaScript functions – using these lists of useful words.
Undersea Cables by Rishi Sunak [PDF]
Years before becoming Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak wrote this report, Undersea Cables: Indispensable, insecure.
Data Design Language
I like this approach to offering a design system. It seems less prescriptive than many:
Designed not as a rule set, but rather a toolbox, the Data Design Language includes a chart library, design guidelines, colour and typographic style specifications with usability guidance for internationalization (i18n) and accessibility (a11y), all reflecting our data design principles.
Artifice and Intelligence
Whatever the merit of the scientific aspirations originally encompassed by the term “artificial intelligence,” it’s a phrase that now functions in the vernacular primarily to obfuscate, alienate, and glamorize.
Do “cloud” next!
A Quick History of Digital Communication Before the Internet - Eager Blog
A potted history of communication networks from the pony express and the telegraph to ethernet and wi-fi.
The Infrastructural Power Beneath the Internet as We Know It - The Reboot
I’ve lately been trying an exercise where, when reading anything by or about tech companies, I replace uses of the word “infrastructure” with “means of production.”
Brilliant!
A Wire Across the Ocean | American Scientist
Ainissa Ramirez recounts the story of the transatlantic telegraph cable, the Apollo project of its day.
CSS Vocabulary
This is a nifty visual interactive explainer for the language of CSS—could be very handy for Codebar students.
Variable fonts’ past, present and future, according to Dalton Maag
In this interview, Biance Berning says:
Cassie Evans from Clearleft is an interesting person to follow as she combines web animation with variable font technology, essentially exploring the technology’s practicality and expression.
Hells yeah!
We’re only just scratching the surface of what variable fonts can do within more interactive and immersive spaces. I think we’ll see a lot more progress and experimentation with that as time goes on.
Open UI
An interesting project that will research and document the language used across different design systems to name similar components.
Weft. — Ethan Marcotte
I think we often focus on designing or building an element, without researching the other elements it should connect to—without understanding the system it lives in.
VocaliD
You know how donating blood is a really good thing to do? Well, now you also donate your voice.
A Design System Grammar | Daniel T. Eden, Designer
Once again, we can learn from Christoper Alexander’s A Pattern Language when it comes to create digital design systems, especially this part (which reminds me of one of the panes you can view in Fractal’s default interface):
- Each pattern’s documentation is preceded with a list of other patterns that employ the upcoming pattern
- Each pattern’s documentation is followed by a list of other patterns that are required for this pattern
The People’s Cloud
A documentary by Matt Parker (brother of Andy) that follows in the footsteps of people like Andrew Blum, James Bridle, and Ingrid Burrington, going in search of the physical locations of the internet, and talking to the people who maintain it. Steven Pemberton makes an appearance in the first and last of five episodes:
- What is the Cloud vs What Existed Before?
- Working out the Internet: it’s a volume game
- The Submarine Cable Network
- How Much Data Is There?
- Convergence
The music makes it feel quite sinister.
The New York Herald, August 7, 1865
A transatlantic cable, hurrah!
Watch the Watchers
Monika’s end-of-year piece is rather excellent:
The map exposes the network of fibre optic internet cables that lie deep below the sea giving an unfettered glimpse of the government’s counterterrorism tactics and the murky justifications behind them.
The proto-internet | Intelligent Life magazine
Mapping the submarine cables of the Victorian internet.
And by the way, why did nobody tell me about Cartophilia before now? I’m very disappointed in you.