Vlad Savov

Google and Facebook announced their participation in a new subsea cable system for 2024 set to improve internet connectivity across the Asia-Pacific region. Dubbed Apricot, the infrastructure project will link Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Guam, the Philippines, and Indonesia and help serve growing demand for broadband access and 5G wireless connectivity.

A 1996 Wall Street Journal article that’s been quietly sitting on the web, waiting for its rediscovery and renewed relevance, has found its moment on Twitter this week. Though it discusses the contemporaneous issues and concerns of its time, if you extract the particular problems it identifies with the internet and apply them to our present day, you’ll find something disturbing: nothing’s changed.

[Commentary] The United States is a nation quarreling with itself right now. Most of the country’s population wants to keep the internet an equitable and free place, embracing net neutrality rules as a necessary guardian against corporate overreach. But the current political administration seems hellbent on dismantling net neutrality and handing internet service providers the freedom to mold, shape, manipulate, and price internet access in whatever fashion they like.