Where the name comes from
In 1492, a sailor set out to connect the known world.
Christopher Columbus sailed west from Spain in August 1492 with three small ships. Educated people of his day knew the world was round; the argument was about how big it was. Columbus was sure that Asia, the far edge of the known world, lay only weeks away across the ocean.
He was wrong about the distance. On 12 October his crew sighted an island in the Bahamas, and two halves of the world that had never been in lasting contact were joined from then on.
The name Lumbus is a nod to that voyage: the belief that the world is closer than the maps say, and that the routes joining people are worth building. His voyages are also remembered for the harm they brought to the people already living there. What we carry from the story is the crossing, not the conquest.
More than five hundred years later, a phone call reaches almost anywhere. Going live from anywhere has meant a truck or a backpack of modems. That is the crossing we are making now: from the phone in your hand to everyone watching.
