The future is calling: it took 100 years to connect the first billion people by phone and only 10 years to connect the second billion. (In Focus).(communication techonology)

Little orange flags have sprouted along the sidewalks in Bethesda, a Maryland suburb just over the line from Washington, D.C. I have seen enough of these flags to know that they fly for the diggers. Someday soon the diggers and their backhoes and their flashing warning lights will arrive to tear up the roads and slow down traffic so they can bury something. But what?

Not far from my home I caught up with Martin 1. Droney, who was running a crew of telephone company workers. Martin introduced me to the rewiring of the world. It is a world of cables buried on land and in ...

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