For the last several days I’ve been researching the main internet sub cables wondering what could of possibly led to all the breakage (explained visually today on Rocketboom):
Now I understand how easy it is to knock out the Internet.
What’s interesting is that no authorities are talking about it and the domain, so to speak, belongs to private business.
As Nicholas Carr noticed, it’s really a very vulnerable system.
While traffic was clogged mostly for the Middle East and India, I was following the global Internet traffic reports and Iran was the one country that had zero throughput, all weekend long.
There are a lot of conspiracy theorists in the world and I’m not one of them. With regards to this event? It seems like there is really no other way of understanding the cause of the breaks without first assuming that they were intentional.
While it’s an interesting mystery and I’d love to know who cut the cables, more interesting to me is what I leaned about the vulnerability of the the main arteries of the internet. Speaking of decentralization, I think we are in need of more mesh.
I have recently called for Twitter to decentralize, I believe the features of Twitter can be covered by Tumblr, and now I realize that I’m a dedicated Twitter user and plan on staying that way. I cant explain all of the reasons why, but I am sure that its really great and I love it.
So I thought it was a great time to finally bust out my Twitter 404 Art Collection that I have been working on for almost a year. I hope you enjoy it, please send me any screen-caps of official Twitter down designs you have come across and look for a Twitter Down Art meet-up here in NYC in coming months.
Improvement soon message:
Improved Message:
Using the cute:
Napping:
Lost Connection:
Upgrading:
Upgrading (variation):
Uncertain technical problem:
Temporary Downtime
Scheduled Downtime (variation on Temporary Downtime)
Some experts suggest this work may not be authentic:
Server Not Responding:
Ice Cream Cone Chills With Twitter Worm:
Added, 2010: Animated Fail Whale created completely in CSS: From Subcide
BP Fail Whale:
Updated July 11, 2019:
(S)he’s back. Less faded than before, and almost no padding on top. Noted: Most of the down messages from the early days above show each message is in a speech-bubble, being said by the twitter logo, or, what twitter has to say itself. No longer.
