The internet powers the modern world but it’s eminently fragile

The great CrowdStrike crash of 2024 was a surprise, but it’s more surprising that widespread failures don’t occur more often, writes Shaun Prescott.

OPINION | END USER Last August a CNET feature about the upkeep of the world’s underwater internet cables went viral. Indeed, Australians might be surprised – perhaps alarmed – to learn that only 15 cables, buried eight kilometres beneath the ocean’s surface, power most of Australia’s data traffic, with all but three on the east coast. The virality of that feature doesn’t prove that people are ignorant, much less that they’re dumb: it’s more that it demonstrates how the internet has joined that group of critical infrastructure that seems as natural and god-given as the air. It’s a phenomenon we make use of everyday thanks to rapidly improvised and nowadays long-in-the-tooth infrastructural efforts that, by the standards of the 2020s, may look decidedly wonky (the federal government has recently announced…

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APC (Digital) - 1 Issue, September 2024

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