Abstract
This book deals with a neglected dimension of global communications networks. Undersea fibre-optic cable systems are responsible for the transmission of so many digital forms of communication, from phone calls to emails, website traffic to cross-national interaction via social media. Yet for the most part we overlook these systems or simply take them for granted. Nicole Starosielski’s study looks closely at these digital intercontinental connections, exploring how the transoceanic network they knit together operates materially and environmentally as well as culturally and politically. She outlines the three major periods of cable development, from the 1850s through to the present, before examining the two main narrative modes of connection and disconnection through which the great majority of stories about submarine cables are constructed in popular culture. Starosielski then turns to the cable station as a gateway to the network, and to landing zones as sites of conflict. The final two chapters in the book focus on how network modes are conditioned by specific politics, histories and geographies, and on how undersea cables relate to changing knowledge of and acquaintance with the oceanic environment and seafloor. The multistranded analysis developed in the book provides a rewarding account that blends cultural history with investigative ethnography and along the way takes us to remote sites in Hawaii, Tahiti and Guam. Most importantly, Starosielski brings the infrastructure of undersea cable systems back into visibility, showing us in vivid ways what makes global communications possible. (The book is accompanied by a website, www.surfacing.in, which traces cable routes, offers access to photographs and archival material, and gives more information about island cable hubs.)