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Lawrence Lessig was in the process of becoming a node on the citywide wireless network in San Francisco, but there was one little problem: the conduit he'd had installed from the roof to the server room in the basement made two 90-degree turns and one 45-degree turn on the way. How to get an Ethernet cable through it? Google to the rescue!

So of course we turned first to the internet. I typed in a totally natural language question into Google (which I find these days is increasingly the best method): something like “how do you thread a cable through a long conduit with 90 degree angles.” The first post that came up was a thread from some list titled Threading fiber through a long conduit. This thread reported no good luck, but it had the kernel of an idea: a vacuum cleaner.

So we took a bit of foam, tied it to the end of a roll of kite string, and connected a small Shop-Vac at the other end of the conduit (which is at least 50 feet long). Bingo. The key, it seems, is to have a big but light obstruction, and google at hand.