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Series of tubes was a metaphor used by United States Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), to describe the Internet in a Wednesday, June 28, 2006 speech about network neutrality•, possibly confusing it with networking terms like "pipes" or "tunnels". Stevens was criticizing a proposed amendment to a bill in the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation which would have prohibited Internet service providers from charging fees to give some companies higher priority access to their networks or their customers. The metaphor became emblematic of the speech (and Stevens' seemingly poor understanding of the Internet) despite Stevens making several other odd comparisons and references.
Partial text of Stevens comments Publicity On June 28, Public Knowledge Government Affairs Manager Alex Curtis wrote a brief blog entry by Ryan Singel, including Singel's transcriptions of some parts of Stevens' speech considered the most humorous. Within days, thousands of other blogs and message boards, including BoingBoing , Slashdot , Fark , DailyKos , and Digg , posted the story. Most writers and commentators derisively cited several of Senator Stevens' misunderstandings of Internet technology, arguing that the speech showed that Senator Stevens had apparently formed a strong opinion on a topic which he understood poorly (e.g., referring to an e-mail message as "an Internet", and blaming bandwidth issues for an e-mail problem much more likely to be caused by mail server or routing issues). The Internet phenomenon sparked mainstream media attention, including a mention in a New York Times story . The technology podcast This Week in Tech discussed the incident in Episode 60. Within two weeks, the speech had also become the subject of several musical remixes, t-shirts, and fan sites . Citations on The Daily Show Stevens' speech was also ridiculed on five episodes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart which featured clips of Stevens' speech. Stewart proceeded to compare him to "a crazy old man in an airport bar at 3:00 am," then going on to answer his final question, "Why?" with, "Maybe it's because you don't seem to know jack shit about computers or the Internet — but that's okay — you're just the guy in charge of regulating it." The picture accompanying the transcript also changed, going from Stevens to Gabby Hayes to Abraham Simpson, a further continuation of the "crazy old man" theme. On July 19, 2006 The Daily Show again addressed Stevens' concept, this time featuring John Hodgman's faux-expert criticism of the tubes metaphor. Stevens' "series of tubes" were again referenced in a July 24, 2006 interview with John McCain, where Stewart asked, "You know, privately, can you pull Senator Stevens aside and go, 'It's not really literally tubes'?", to which McCain replied, "I wouldn't want to disillusion him." On August 8, 2006, The Daily Show again referenced Stevens' quote in regard to BP's troubles with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Correspondent Rob Corddry started to explain the trouble with the pipeline, then turned it over to a recording of Ted Stevens saying, "It's not a big truck. It's, it's a series of tubes!" On October 2, 2006, correspondent John Oliver referenced Stevens' quote in a segment called Sexual Congress, which focused on Congressman Mark Foley's instant messages with an underage page. In the segment, Oliver remarked, "Everyone knows that Congresspeople are assigned to committees based on their greatest weakness! Why else would Senator Ted Stevens, a man more comfortable in the horse and buggy era, wind up in charge of regulating the Internet... which, he believes, is a series of tubes... a series of tubes through which other Congressmen can reach in and fondle sixteen-year olds?" Defense of terminology Stevens' speech was notably defended by Edward Felten, who said that he disagreed with Stevens' argument but felt that his terminology was entirely reasonable as a non-technical explanation given off-the-cuff in a meeting. According to Reuters, Stevens is open to going on The Daily Show to rebut Jon Stewart and defended his use of the term by asserting, "I have a letter from a big scientist who said I was absolutely right in using the word 'tubes'". A common idiom for an Internet connection in the technical community is "pipe". Media Links | ||||||||
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