In what sense? What's a physical data connection? There's a shit ton of routers and switches in between, it's not like there's an electrical connection.
Edit: I concede it's actually pretty remarkable. It is like the nervous system of the planet. Sure there's not a purely electrical continuity, but neuron synapses don't have an electrical nature either.
The grids also have interconnections with one another, but they happen via DC to avoid needing to synchronize the whole continent.
In a literal sense, modernity is about using energy to coordinate human activity across vast distances at minute time scales. We normally think about this in terms of transportation, telegraphy, telephony, print, broadcasting, and the internet but it's also true of the motors in our washing machines and factories.
Unless your backbone/computer has a wireless hop, a literal, uninterrupted, physical chain of physical electronic devices, physically connected to one another with wires/cables, goes from my keyboard to yours. This is literal, not poetic. I'm not saying a galvanic connection. I'm saying a physical connection where, if nothing was bolted down, and high tension cables were used, I could pull and you would feel it.
https://99percentinvisible.org/article/vintage-skynet-atts-a...