With the recent large-scale Internet outages in much of the Middle East and Southeast Asia due to the severing of undersea fiber optic links, it’s a good time to go back and read “Mother Earth Mother Board,” an essay by Neal Stephenson written for Wired in 1996. In the piece, Stephenson travels to several continents to chronicle the laying of undersea fiber optic cables, including the repair process:

Clearly, submarine cable repair is a good business to be in. Cable repair ships are standing by in ports all over the world, on 24-hour call, waiting for a break to happen somewhere in their neighborhood.