What I Liked
Blum is a talented writer. His phrasing is often beautiful. For example, "There was still this gap between the physical and the virtual, the abstract of information and the damp breeze off the sea" (216). I wish he was a novelist; he understands how to word things in a compelling way.

What I Didn't Like
I read this book as an assignment for a senior-level telecommunications course... and I struggled to make it to the last page. This is a technical book. I won't go so far to call it a textbook, but it's certainly not light, fun reading. Blum spends a large portion of his time writing somewhat of a memoir instead of the subject of Tubes: the internet. A couple of quotes that help to show what I mean:

"We marched along a wide bike path, dodging middle schoolers pedaling home from soccer practice, and scampered across a couple wide intersections" (153).

"...we walked past a sullen teenager waiting outside with his mother, then down the grand staircase at the center of the building, out the front steps, and around to a little side door into the basement" (241).

I appreciate Blum's attempt to make a fairly dull subject matter into something more artistic, but the attempt fell flat. As a student trying to learn more about telecommunications and the internet, I found myself wading through empty words and detailed descriptions to get to the knowledge I wanted. The wordiness of the book often left me confused and unfulfilled.