A Neal Stephenson long read about undersea cables. So good!
In 2026 this is a surprisingly non-pearl clutching take on British influence abroad.
Two notes of interest, it only covers "British influence abroad" at one specific location for a relatively short interval of time, and it neatly avoids looking too deeply into a classic of British colonialism; the divide and conquer approach of strategically favouring some over others to push any resulting unrest at arms length away from the actual British.
By what metric? Recall that not all people value the same things.
The outcome of British colonialism in Tasmania was 100% extinction of locals - I mean sure, you can call that incredible as you did, but that was never a word used by Truganini
Jamaica, sure, greatest Winter Olympic team ever .. but hardly the poster child for colonialism and impossible to claim as "better off" than sans or alt colonialism.
Uganda, well, ... enough said.
For anyone who wants to know more about the early history of undersea cables, I also enjoyed ‘A Thread Across the Ocean’ by John Steele Gordon.
Does it mean that there's a ton of repeaters under the sea? Where do they get the power from?
the extra interesting part i think is how they amplify the signal without having to decode it, just optically
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable...
(This is a really meandering article!)