If you’ve heard about the recent submarine cable outages, you might enjoy reading this fascinating 1996 article by science fiction genius Neal Stephenson on the first world-spanning fiber-optic network.  It includes some background on the brilliant and daring 19th century inventors and entrepreneurs who created the first world-spanning communications networks.  I’ve been reading it for the last nine hours, but I’m still not done because of all the historical and future (for 1996) places, technologies, and events it describes.