Outlands: finding bandwidth in the new wired wilderness

Joshua Kopstein on the growth of the grid in the forest:

In this new wilderness, data packets fly through the trees faster than the swiftest birds, ensnared in the tractor beams of ubiquitous, pocket-sized chunks of metal and plastic. As night approaches we begin to make our camp at another portrait-worthy site overlooking a tiny village. Somewhere in the hills below us, I imagine, a camper pauses as his BlackBerry stirs in his pack, an urgent email inquiring about those damn TPS reports; his bored teenaged kid sends a flurry of Facebook status updates lamenting the loss of modern comforts, giddily anticipating the sympathetic ‘likes’ of her peers. And all the while, crowds of day hikers trek through, capturing and transmitting the idyllic scenery instantaneously only to leave it behind moments later.