In what sense? What's a physical data connection? There's a shit ton of routers and switches in between, it's not like there's an electrical connection.
You could run your finger across from my keyboard to yours, without a single break in the continuous physical connection between them. Connector clips included, of course. ;)
I understand that you are being poetic, but just in case someone reads this as fact: you are describing a dedicated circuit - which is what telephones used. The internet works on packet switching, so there are numerous little breaks between the signal and receiver as your data is routed along a "connection".
No, I'm talking about the physical layer of the OSI model, and including the mechanical connections between those physical interfaces. You're talking about the link layer.
Unless your backbone/computer has a wireless hop, a literal, uninterrupted, physical chain of physical electronic devices, physically connected to one another with wires/cables, goes from my keyboard to yours. This is literal, not poetic. I'm not saying a galvanic connection. I'm saying a physical connection where, if nothing was bolted down, and high tension cables were used, I could pull and you would feel it.
AT&T had wireless microwave towers for phones and tv, so I imagine there was a period near the end if its life where some dial-up connections weren't physically connected:
Working for a Midwest dialup isp in the early 2000s, we definitely served some of our smaller POPs with PTP wireless backbones, thanks in part to vast expanses of flat land with fairly tall structures dotted throughout.
Yes, and if the comment implied a purely electrical connection, it is likely not the case either, as there is electrical to optical and vice versa transitions throughout.
I don't know, I alternate between thinking that's remarkable and not so much. I could run that connection via the power grid too, or the water supply (if we were in the same city).
Edit: I concede it's actually pretty remarkable. It is like the nervous system of the planet. Sure there's not a purely electrical continuity, but neuron synapses don't have an electrical nature either.
Are you sure? As far as I'm aware a single city might have its electricity network split in a few macro areas, and not really connected to each other. The Internet, on the other hand, needs all nodes to be connected somehow (and I bet the vast majority of connections are physical).
This is true but on a much larger scale than the city. For example, the United States has only three electrical grids (East, West, and Texas). Within those areas, not only are all electricity users in some sense connected, they are all /synchronous/, meaning that the 60hz coming out of your wall peaks and troughs at the same exact time as the 60hz at your cousin's house two states away.
The grids also have interconnections with one another, but they happen via DC to avoid needing to synchronize the whole continent.
In a literal sense, modernity is about using energy to coordinate human activity across vast distances at minute time scales. We normally think about this in terms of transportation, telegraphy, telephony, print, broadcasting, and the internet but it's also true of the motors in our washing machines and factories.
