full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Andrew Blum: Discover the physical side of the internet

Unscramble the Blue Letters


And I was particularly interested because I wntaed to see one of these cables being built. See, you know, all the time online we experience these fleeting moments of connection, these sort of brief adjacencies, a tweet or a Facebook post or an email, and it seemed like there was a physical corollary to that. It seemed like there was a moment when the ciotennnt was being plugged in, and I wanted to see that. And Simon was working on a new cable, WACS, the West Africa Cable sstyem, that stretched from Lisbon down the west coast of Africa, to Cote d'Ivoire, to Ghana, to Nigeria, to Cameroon. And he said there was cnoimg soon, depending on the weather, but he'd let me know when, and so with about four days notice, he said to go to this becah suoth of Lisbon, and a little after 9, this guy will walk out of the water. (Laughter) And he'll be carrying a green nylon line, a lightweight line, called a mgensseer line, and that was the first link between sea and land, this link that would then be leveraged into this 9,000-mile path of lhgit. Then a bulldozer bagen to pull the clabe in from this seclzpiiead cable landing ship, and it was floated on these byuos until it was in the right place. Then you can see the English engineers looking on. And then, once it was in the right place, he got back in the water holding a big knife, and he cut each buoy off, and the buoy popped up into the air, and the cable dppoerd to the sea floor, and he did that all the way out to the ship, and when he got there, they gave him a glsas of juice and a cooike, and then he jempud back in, and he swam back to shore, and then he lit a cigarette. (Laughter)

Open Cloze


And I was particularly interested because I ______ to see one of these cables being built. See, you know, all the time online we experience these fleeting moments of connection, these sort of brief adjacencies, a tweet or a Facebook post or an email, and it seemed like there was a physical corollary to that. It seemed like there was a moment when the _________ was being plugged in, and I wanted to see that. And Simon was working on a new cable, WACS, the West Africa Cable ______, that stretched from Lisbon down the west coast of Africa, to Cote d'Ivoire, to Ghana, to Nigeria, to Cameroon. And he said there was ______ soon, depending on the weather, but he'd let me know when, and so with about four days notice, he said to go to this _____ _____ of Lisbon, and a little after 9, this guy will walk out of the water. (Laughter) And he'll be carrying a green nylon line, a lightweight line, called a _________ line, and that was the first link between sea and land, this link that would then be leveraged into this 9,000-mile path of _____. Then a bulldozer _____ to pull the _____ in from this ___________ cable landing ship, and it was floated on these _____ until it was in the right place. Then you can see the English engineers looking on. And then, once it was in the right place, he got back in the water holding a big knife, and he cut each buoy off, and the buoy popped up into the air, and the cable _______ to the sea floor, and he did that all the way out to the ship, and when he got there, they gave him a _____ of juice and a ______, and then he ______ back in, and he swam back to shore, and then he lit a cigarette. (Laughter)

Solution


  1. system
  2. buoys
  3. beach
  4. began
  5. light
  6. coming
  7. continent
  8. glass
  9. specialized
  10. jumped
  11. dropped
  12. cable
  13. wanted
  14. messenger
  15. south
  16. cookie

Original Text


And I was particularly interested because I wanted to see one of these cables being built. See, you know, all the time online we experience these fleeting moments of connection, these sort of brief adjacencies, a tweet or a Facebook post or an email, and it seemed like there was a physical corollary to that. It seemed like there was a moment when the continent was being plugged in, and I wanted to see that. And Simon was working on a new cable, WACS, the West Africa Cable System, that stretched from Lisbon down the west coast of Africa, to Cote d'Ivoire, to Ghana, to Nigeria, to Cameroon. And he said there was coming soon, depending on the weather, but he'd let me know when, and so with about four days notice, he said to go to this beach south of Lisbon, and a little after 9, this guy will walk out of the water. (Laughter) And he'll be carrying a green nylon line, a lightweight line, called a messenger line, and that was the first link between sea and land, this link that would then be leveraged into this 9,000-mile path of light. Then a bulldozer began to pull the cable in from this specialized cable landing ship, and it was floated on these buoys until it was in the right place. Then you can see the English engineers looking on. And then, once it was in the right place, he got back in the water holding a big knife, and he cut each buoy off, and the buoy popped up into the air, and the cable dropped to the sea floor, and he did that all the way out to the ship, and when he got there, they gave him a glass of juice and a cookie, and then he jumped back in, and he swam back to shore, and then he lit a cigarette. (Laughter)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
physical process 4
physical world 2
black box 2
red light 2
real world 2
short list 2
landing station 2


Important Words


  1. adjacencies
  2. africa
  3. air
  4. beach
  5. began
  6. big
  7. built
  8. bulldozer
  9. buoy
  10. buoys
  11. cable
  12. cables
  13. called
  14. cameroon
  15. carrying
  16. cigarette
  17. coast
  18. coming
  19. connection
  20. continent
  21. cookie
  22. corollary
  23. cote
  24. cut
  25. days
  26. depending
  27. dropped
  28. email
  29. engineers
  30. english
  31. experience
  32. facebook
  33. fleeting
  34. floated
  35. floor
  36. gave
  37. ghana
  38. glass
  39. green
  40. guy
  41. holding
  42. interested
  43. juice
  44. jumped
  45. knife
  46. land
  47. landing
  48. laughter
  49. leveraged
  50. light
  51. lightweight
  52. line
  53. link
  54. lisbon
  55. lit
  56. messenger
  57. moment
  58. moments
  59. nigeria
  60. notice
  61. nylon
  62. online
  63. path
  64. physical
  65. place
  66. plugged
  67. popped
  68. post
  69. pull
  70. sea
  71. ship
  72. shore
  73. simon
  74. sort
  75. south
  76. specialized
  77. stretched
  78. swam
  79. system
  80. time
  81. tweet
  82. wacs
  83. walk
  84. wanted
  85. water
  86. weather
  87. west
  88. working