The Internet is “a series of tubes”
I didn’t say it. Ted Stevens, the Republican from Alaska who voted against Net Neutrality explains why he voted against net neutrality, and while he was at it, explained to us exactly what the internet is. I thought his explanation could use some illustrations, so I created a PowerPoint presentation to help Ted explain.
Ted, feel free to download my PowerPoint file and use it in future committee meetings.
For those of you who don’t have IE or PowerPoint, I’ll work on turning the presentation into images over the holiday.
Update: Patrick turned it into a series of images for me. Since he did the work, he gets the link. Thanks, guy.
Update 2: And now, for your viewing pleasure, an Adobe PDF file, thanks to several readers, but specifically, Nathan B., who sent me the smallest copy.
Have to conserve the bandwidth, y’know. All those fat guys in tubes are hogging it.
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:11 pm
Heh, cutting straight to the point, eh Meryl?
Those weren’t the tubes I had in mind, but hey, I’m amused.
Ya know, a rubber ducky ’sqeaker’ sound bite for turning the page would be a nice addition to the pp file. Your welcome. :)
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:35 pm
[...] UPDATE: Despite the fact that I think PowerPoint is a greater tool for evil than weaponized anthrax or SpiceWorld, Meryl Yourish has created an absolutely brilliant PowerPoint parody of Stevens’ comments that simply must be seen. Clip art has never been so funny – at least not so intentionally funny. [...]
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:47 pm
Bravo, Meryl, bravo!
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Looks fine with Open Office!
And if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck… it must be Senator Stevens.
Assiduously working to give us an Internet to Nowhere.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:21 pm
To save the PowerPoint file as a series of images…
File > Sales As
And then change “Save as type:” to GIF or JPEG.
It’s as easy as sending an Internet.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:25 pm
I dont know the full background of the net neutrality bill Stevens favored or opposed, but it seems like he’s taking an unfair beating for his line that the Internet is a “series of tubes.” He’s right of course in using the metaphor of “a series of pipes”, and of course its wrong to use “a series of [inner] tubes.”
Now the pipes do have capacities, like the plumbing in your house and like the streets and roads in your town, and when those pipes or roads are overused, then there is congestion, and congestion slows down *everybody* and on the highway, unpriced congestion costs are the largest cost.
If “net neutrality” means “free” [unpriced or non-market priced] access then there will be congestion. If net neutrality means you can’t manipulate service levels to others, including competitors to give yourself a competitive advantage, then that is quite another matter ….
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Great stuff Meryl.
Is that Ted responding above?
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Kinda reminds you of another dingbat Senator who had no idea what he was talking about when he opened his mouth about Internet goings-on, but he’d be damned if he didn’t stick up and defend the people paying his campaign a lot of money so he could run again.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Great presentation, Meryl!
I hope you don’t mind, I made an html version of your Powerpoint presentation: http://www.southwestern.edu/~ramseyp/stevens-net/
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:41 pm
panu is correct. Stevens got it pretty close to right. IP and other comm connections are almost always explained as “pipes”. If you replace “tubes” with “pipes”, what is the issue with Stevens’ analogy?
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:50 pm
I should just like to point out that nowhere in my post, or in the PowerPoint presentation, do I do anything but quote Senator Stevens directly.
Read into his words what you will, I said nothing.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:56 pm
[...] Update: Meryl Yourish has created a powerpoint presentation to illustrate Sen. Stevens’ explanation of the internet. Yep, I might just have to use that in future with some of my clients. Music: Killer - Boy Kill Boy [...]
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
That is the single funniest thing I have seen on the web in months. I almost laughed a turkey on sourdough onto my keyboard (I managed to save it only through serious effort).
Thank you Meryl!
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Why don’t you send him an internet and ask him?
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:02 pm
On politicians and the internet, redux…
It is pretty clear that politicians don’t get the net. They listen to whatever their big donors telcos tell them, but they squawk more like parakeets than African Grays. Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) may have just proven he’s the most……
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:10 pm
SENATOR TED STEVENS DEMONSTRATES A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE OF THE INTERNET…
Last week I wrote about some unfortunate legislation sponsored by Alaska’s Senator Ted Stevens that would mandate broadcast flags. Today, I noticed that Senator Stevens, in the context of net neutrality*), has been talking to his colleagues about the …
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:16 pm
If you send him an Internet, ask him to explain this too - “Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it’s not using what consumers use every day.”
Consumers without commerce?
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:28 pm
This is not a big deal.What Sen Stevens is saying is,he needs his tubes cleaned out,and needs to lay some new pipe, and he’ll feel much better.
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:29 pm
I always thought it was Congress that was a bunch of tubes. Silly me!
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:32 pm
A quick “internet” will straighten him right out.
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Patrick: Nice job. I don’t mind. Viral marketing is the new internet, right? No, wait. It’s the new pipe.
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Normally you have to pay…
to be entertained by a fool like this. This is tremendously ignorant. Keep in mind - these are the people making decisions that affect your life. Every day. Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your……
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:37 pm
I’ll send my company your resume and this PowerPoint as a work sample. I’m sure you’ll be getting a call any day now…
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:38 pm
And before I forget, thank you all for the kind words. It was as much fun for me to make the PowerPoint as it was for you to read it.
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Ted Stevens is wrong: the Internet is made of strings, not tubes. When you click on a link, that pulls a tiny string in your computer, which pulls a larger string that goes to the link. Why do you think they call it the “world wide web”? It really is a web.
Stevens’s larger point is still true, though: if we let commercial interests use the Internet for their commercial purposes, it could fall apart. After all, lots of the strings (especially the ones nearest, or even inside, your computer) are in fact thinner than spider webs. Yank too hard on them, and the web falls apart. That’s why routers keep going down. You didn’t think Linksys had actually discovered how to make a solid-state device that fails after 18 months of quiet operation, did you?
Don’t be silly.
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:53 pm
Actually, MrFred, I’m quite good with PowerPoint and Visio and most graphic programs. I cut my teeth as an Atex Typesetter years ago, and moved into the desktop publishing world as desktop publishing entered the pre-press industry.
This presentation took no time at all to kick together. It was a lark. But I do have some serious presentations used in previous jobs.
July 3rd, 2006 at 6:17 pm
Everyone here who made the connection between “tubes” and “pipes” is pretty much correct. Stevens is a little fuzzy on how this all works (as are most Americans) but his worst sin seems to be taking pointers from AT&T Chairman Ed Whitacre, who famously said his “pipes” weren’t free. And forgive me for defending the old senator, but sometimes even veteran politicians misspeak, with all the talking they do, so I’m sure Stevens would correct his description of getting an “internet” from his staff. The elderly are pretty bad when it comes to technology anyway, so Stevens is relatively advanced. That said, the PowerPoint file is hilarious.
July 3rd, 2006 at 7:24 pm
“The elderly are pretty bad when it comes to technology anyway,”-
As an elderly voter, I can tell you you’re correct.Learning new technology is kind of like learning to play the piano - if you start at 50 or 60 years old,there is little chance of seeing Carnegie Hall unless you purchase a ticket and sit in the audience—neither should Sen.Stevens be in a public forum “explaining” technology to those who understand it much better than he does,unless he enjoys making an asshat out of himself.
July 3rd, 2006 at 8:06 pm
Maybe he meant “aluminum tubes”.
I have an idea. Instead of “broadcasting” the internet could use “tokens”. Much more efficient.
July 3rd, 2006 at 8:56 pm
Is Ted Stevens all that incorrect? Not particularly. There is a limit to how much information the various backbones can carry; the nature of TCP/IP is that it makes a best-effort to deliver the packets, but it is by no means fool-proof; the killer-app for the Internet is still email, not on-demand video or VOIP.
On the face of it, if you get beyond the malapropisms and fugly terminology, he’s not blowing 100% smoke out of his ass.
I’m not sure what point this satiric PowerPoint is supposed to prove.
July 3rd, 2006 at 10:48 pm
It’s a litmus test, rho. It proves whether or not you have a sense of humor.
Vulcan, much?
July 4th, 2006 at 12:21 am
That was a gem. I’m not even reading any comments that suggest otherwise because I’m not going to let anyone kill the funny with this one.
July 4th, 2006 at 7:48 am
Senator Stevens Explains the Internets…
Read it and weep, friends. Sleep peacefully, your Senate is awake. Update: Meryl Yourish explains it all better here….
July 4th, 2006 at 9:10 am
Screamingly funny, both Stevens and the presentation!
I know Democrats are dumb, but I’d really like Republicans to leave some room for doubt. Stevens blew that bigtime.
July 4th, 2006 at 11:17 am
W.A.R….
Well, it looks like Wide Awakes Radio is up and running, with amazingly few glitches so far. It’s a bit free-form at the moment, but certainly less stuffy than commercial radio and heck, it’s opening day….
July 4th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
The reactions to Meryl’s .ppt is almost as funny as Stevens’ original statements. Fascinating.
July 5th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
Internet Tubes: A Powerpoint Presentation…
Funny. Based on a post by Yourish. Thanks to a commenter…….
July 6th, 2006 at 6:40 am
I think a key point here is that although the tubes analogy is fine it is clear that Stevens doesn’t have enough of a grip on the basic Internet to know enough to make his own decision on net neutrality. The fact that he’s out there stumbling over himself indicates that he’s touting someone else’s opinion. But hey, this is about the most corrupt congress we’ve ever had, so what’s the harm then, right?
July 8th, 2006 at 7:25 pm
[...] Meryl Yourish took the ridiculous speech made by Alaskan pork-laden Senator Ted Stevens last week and made it into a short and sweet Powerpoint presentation. I thought I’d take it a step further and convert it into HTML using Eric Meyers’ s5. Fire a link back to Meryl and that’s that. Meryl emails me and says she’s getting referral hits from my page. Seems it got linked from another couple of blogs. She coined a term for this situation that I really like: echolanche. [...]
July 9th, 2006 at 2:03 am
Slides for Ted Stevens’s “it’s made of tubes” speech…
Here’s a set of homemade powerpoint slides to accompany Senator Stevens’s hilariously craptastic “the Internet is made of tubes” speech. Link (via Vertical Hold) Update: Patrick sez, ‘The original slideshow of Senator Ted Stevens’ “Internet is …
July 10th, 2006 at 11:55 am
Well if you listen to the Telco’s version of net neutrality it means google, yahoo and other high traffic websites are getting a free lunch. In the real world though, these websites pay enormous hosting and bandwidth charges by they’re ISP’s who in turn is charged by the Telco’s for the inter-connects. What the telcos are really trying to do is gain control of traffic prioritization so they could effectively counter the growth of VoIP and be able to charge extra fee’s to the VoIP providers for the privelage of ceompeting against them. Oh sure they will say it’s google and yahoo but the fact is those websites pay for traffic bit by bit. This is about maintaining a monopoly on voice services.
July 13th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Someone did a Senator Stevens political blog at http://www.senatorstevens.blogspot.com
July 14th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
[...] We’d rather not look back, but it’s like a horrible car accident–sometimes you can’t help but look. Battelle flagged this hilarious recap by ChezLark, and we also recommend for your pleasure Yourish’s comic PowerPoint presentation conveying the senile senator’s geriatric blather. And while you’re at it, might as well check out Idiot Boxers on Salon.com, thought it’s from previous stupidity. [...]
July 15th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Open Office opens it rather well :D
July 15th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
[...] A Powerpoint presentation [...]
July 19th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
[...] this lovely power point presentation, [...]
July 21st, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Ted raps about the Tubular Bell-cos here - http://www.bethemedia.org