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101010000101011100011. These inscrutable strings of binary digits form the invisible infrastructure of digital civilization.

And their information is material, the result of molecular exchanges between electrons, water, and minerals. Every time you hit the play button or upload a photo to the cloud, you are sending bits hurtling at the speed of light through undersea cables as thin as your hairs. You do this effortlessly, but the countless servers and storage drives in faraway data centers take a heavy toll on both communities and the environment.