On today’s Fresh Air: the physical spaces that make up the Internet.  (Above: the physical spaces that make up online communities.)

(via xkcd: Online Communities)

He’s not wrong. The Internet is absolutely made of tubes. What else could it be made of? It’s many other things — these protocols and languages and machines and a whole set of fantastically complex layers and layers of computing power that feeds the Internet every day — but if you think of the world in physical terms, and you’re trying to be as reductive as possible and try to understand what this is, there’s no way around it, these are tubes.

— Andrew Blum on the late Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens saying the Internet is made up of ‘a series of tubes.’ [full interview here]

Today’s show is about the Blogotubes.

Interblag (via xkcd: Interblag)

Today: traveling on a journey to the center of the Internet. Guest: writer Andrew Blum.

(via xkcd: Bored with the Internet)

Today we’re taking a journey to the center of the Internet to learn about the data centers and structures that make our web work.

(Pictured: a map of the Internet from 2005.)

The Wordless Web bookmarklet takes any website and strips out the text leaving only images. (via fast company)

Tomorrow: we talk about all the wires and cables that make the Internet work.

Take the yellow pill (by Sergioς)

Tomorrow: we learn about the physical infrastructure that makes up the Internet. (It’s not just a series of tubes…though there are tubes involved.)

A lot of young people often describe and evolve their identities online, curating them 24/7. So their relationships with others and their self-image are deeply affected by the images that they present on Facebook, Google+ and elsewhere.

— And Tumblr? [full interview here]

It’s hard to not respond with texting because you’re not exactly sure what somebody said. You didn’t see the nuances in their face or hear the nuances in their voice. And that changes the nature of human communication.

— On today’s Fresh Air, James Steyer explains how texting and the Internet are changing the way we interact.

Young people in particular often self-reveal before they self-reflect. There is no eraser button today for youthful indiscretion.

— On today’s Fresh Air, how the digital age is changing kids, teens and parents.

By the time the i- prefix was fleshed out, Apple had transformed itself from a culty computer maker to a major religion.

— Linguist Geoff Nunberg says the i-prefix began as an abbreviation for the word Internet, but ended up meaning much more than that.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone on Twitter’s privacy policies: [complete interview here] “When we’re asked to give over private information about users — and in many cases, it’s the law — our policy is, we give the user time to react to this request. If we’ve given 10 days to turn over this information, we immediately notify the user and we tell them, ‘We’ve been asked by the law to hand over this information. We would like to give you this time to fight it on your own behalf and deny giving up this information.’ That allows us to comply with the law and gives the user the ability to hold onto their privacy if they need to.”