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How Silicon Valley Coped With Net Blackout ’09

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Tom Dunlap
Tom Dunlap
Apr 10, 2009


SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — In the next war, the first thing they’ll hit are the computers, my father-in-law said today.

It wasn’t exactly a war zone here this morning, but I did see a lot of shell-shocked Internet soldiers wandering the streets, set adrift by telco pirates who keelhauled a bunch of fiber-optic cables in San Jose and San Carlos early this morning.

Land lines, cell phones, and the Internet all went down in Silicon Valley and beyond, leaving tens of thousands scrambling.

Speculation about who cut the wires was running rampant. Terrorists? Extreme hackers? A union spokeswoman vehemently denied it, but some wondered if it was disgruntled members of the Communications Workers of America, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported.



The blackout had a huge ripple affect. “Keep Santa Cruz Weird,” is a popular slogan in this beach and college town, and there was much weirdness today…

[Continue reading this blog post at Datamation]

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