Tubes

United States Senator Ted Stevens described the Internet as a "series of tubes" while discussing network neutrality. On June 28, 2006, he used this metaphor to criticize a proposed amendment to a committee bill. more...

Home
A/V Accessories & Cables
Apple iPod, MP3 Players
DVD & Home Theater
Gadgets & Other Electronics
Home Audio
MP3 Accessories
Portable Audio/Video
Radios: CB, Ham & Shortwave
2-Way Radios, Walkie Talkies
CB Radio
Ham Radio
Accessories
Antennas
Batteries & Chargers
Books, Manuals, Magazines
Cables & Adapters
Headsets & Earbuds
Keys
Microphones
Other Accessories
Power Supply
Speakers
Amplifiers
Meters
Oscillators & Filters
Other Ham Radio
Receivers
Transceivers
ICOM
Kenwood
Motorola
Other Brands
Yaesu
Transmitters
Tubes
Tuners
Marine Radio
Other CB, Ham & Shortwave
Scanners
Shortwave Radio
Satellite Radio
Satellite, Cable TV
Telephones & Pagers
Televisions

The amendment would have prohibited Internet service providers from charging fees to give some companies higher priority access to their networks or their customers. This metaphor, along with several other odd choices of words, was widely ridiculed as demonstrating Stevens' poor understanding of the Internet.

Partial text of Stevens' comments

Publicity

On June 28, 2006, Public Knowledge Government Affairs Manager Alex Curtis wrote a brief blog entry introducing the Senator's speech and posting an MP3 recording. The next day, the Wired Magazine blog 27B Stroke 6 featured a much longer blog post 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.

Citations on The Daily Show

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has made multiple references to Steven's "series of tubes" description.

July 12, 2006: In breaking the story on the show, host Jon Stewart featured audio excerpts and text transcripts of Stevens' speech, accompanied first by Stevens' photo and later by photos of Gabby Hayes and of Grandpa Simpson. Stewart compared him to "a crazy old man in an airport bar at 3:00 am", then going on to answer his 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.";

Read more at Wikipedia.org