Buzz Out Loud Lounge: How wrong is Ted Stephens?
How wrong is Ted Stephens?
by Alegoo92 - 6/27/07 11:12 AMI'm a little bit confused. All I know of this infamous Stephen's quote is "The internet is a series of tubes." But how incorrect is that statement?
The most common metaphor for the internet is a web. A web is an intertwining 'network' of threads which together make some intricate polygonal design.
Now: if you replace the word "threads" in the aforementioned definition with "tubes", it still makes sense. Tubes may make even more sense because the 'threads' have to transfer information. So what's so wrong with Ted's definition? And if I'm missing an important part: someone please point me in the right direction to see the full quote.
Alex
Series of Tubes
by Kiyomizu - 6/27/07 11:23 AM In reply to: How wrong is Ted Stephens? by Alegoo92Here is the link to a partial quote from the famous "Series of tubes" speech.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes
How you described the internet is the general image people have but when he said there a trucks in the tubes that move information across the internet. The image he gave was more in line with a hollow pipes (Tubes) filled with mechanical gear which is not a good description of electrical impulses across a wired network. Of course, he was ridiculed for his misconception of how the internet works and a general consensus that politicians lack the fundamental and basic knowledge of current technology and how that will affect future technology with politicians possibly writing useless laws.
Old news
by bol_reality_check - 6/27/07 11:52 AM In reply to: How wrong is Ted Stephens? by Alegoo92I guess the "tubes must be clogged" if you are bringing this up a year later.
Stephens' Full quote
by shen97 - 6/27/07 12:12 PM In reply to: How wrong is Ted Stephens? by Alegoo92"They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."
--US Senator Ted Stephens
June 29th 2006
His anti-net neutrality argument and his delivery of any speech on the senate floor (he is a crotchety old man, there is no way to get around it) is the source of the derision from both Buzz Out Loud and The Daily Show. The icing on the cake is his support of the Bridge-To-Nowhere, which culminates the image of US Senator who does not have the people's best interest in mind when making policy decision.
The analogy of trucks, tubes and material does not encompass the digital nature of the internet. Sen. Stephens appears to only be able think in a pre-digital world, where nothing is as abstract as the internet and everything can be held in hand.
Ted Stephens'
by benanzo - 6/27/07 12:23 PM In reply to: How wrong is Ted Stephens? by Alegoo92analogy was idiotic considering anyone (who cares to know) knows that a massive network of fiber optic cabling has already be in place for a few years and currently lays dormant so that AT&T and the cable providers can milk the scarcity of existing bandwidth in an effort to rip off the American consumer. The current fiber network backbone is only being used by the government and large corporations, which consume so little of it's overall capacity that it's virtually nothing.
Just one of these cables could provide high speed internet to the entire SF metro area and there are millions of these cables criss-crossing the country considering each "cable" is actually bundled into a massive cable almost 1 ft in diameter containing about 200 individual cables.
It was only too obvious that Ted Stephens was pandering to the Telcos by making that naive statement.
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