Where the internet lives

The foundations of the cloud

Users of the internet need not think about its physical underpinnings

But for technologies like artificial intelligence and the metaverse to work, others will have to, argues Abby Bertics

Towers of glass and steel

Advances in physical storage and retrieval made the cloud possible

But more progress is needed to sustain it

The edge of tomorrow

The internet got better and faster by moving data closer to users

Now the same must happen with computing power

The internet and climate change

Data centres improved greatly in energy efficiency as they grew massively larger

But can this continue into the age of AI?

Politics

The physical borders of the digital world

To remain geopolitically robust as it gets more potent, the internet will need more diverse interconnections

Starlink

Satellites offer an important alternative to the wired internet

But most of them will be owned by billionaires with their own interests

Securing the cloud’s future

The internet is integrated into virtually every aspect of life

It needs to be kept secure, and kept growing

The physical internet

Sources and acknowledgments