The Economist (January 31, 2024): The latest issue of THE ECONOMIST TECHNOLOGY QUARTERLY is focused on:

Where the internet lives

Users of the internet can ignore its physical underpinnings. But for technologies like artificial intelligence and the metaverse to work, others need to pay attention, argues Abby Bertics

• Users of the internet need not think about its physical underpinnings
• Advances in physical storage and retrieval made the cloud possible
• The internet got better and faster by moving data closer to users
• Data centres improved greatly in energy efficiency as they grew massively larger
• The physical borders of the digital world
• Satellites offer an important alternative to the wired internet
• The internet is integrated into virtually every aspect of life
• Sources and acknowledgments