Load-Bearing

Somewhere in the ocean right now, a small, aging fleet of specialized ships is repairing the cables that carry 99% of the world's international internet traffic. Somewhere else, a content moderator is watching the worst material the internet produces, so you never have to see it. Their success is defined by invisibility - the job is done right exactly when nobody notices it happened at all. Load-Bearing is a book about that category of labor: essential, skilled, and structurally invisible by design, not by accident.
Inside: Why fewer people can repair the internet's physical backbone today than could repair transoceanic telegraph cables in 1904 The real psychological cost paid by the people who keep the internet's worst content off your screen The ancient, unbroken line connecting a Roman food taster to a modern quality-control inspector From Flynn Mercer, author of The Second Read, The Wrong Name, and Too Good to Check.