How the Internet works, by Sen. Ted Stevens

Aargh! That really scares me. It’s not just Stevens, it’s most of congress–it’s most lawmakers in fact. There is a stunning “get-it” gap and it seems (anecdotally) to be drawn at about 45 years of age. Most lawmakers are over 45 years old and so basically don’t understand the “tubes.”

I sometimes speak on panels and give presentations to non-tech audiences about blogging/podcasting/vlogging, etc. and I always ask for a show of hands from people who: read blogs regularly, know what a podcast is, have a MySpace page, have uses Flickr, Delicious, etc. Those over 45 typically keep their hands down, those under 45 typically raise them. I know it’s a vast generalization, but it’s still pretty scary to think that the laws that will govern web 6.0 are being made by people like Stevens.

I remember a Dilbert cartoon from many years ago where the pointy-haired boss is looking around on the floor while holding two ends of network co-ax cable. Dilbert tells Wally, “I told him his token ring fell out.”

TUBES???? Are you shitting me?????

Does he also have Jiffy Lube replace the halogen fluid in his headlights?

And what ISP takes over a day to send an e-mail? Telegraphs were faster than that over 150 years ago.

Just like some states require teachers to pass a competency test every so often…we should make Congresspeople take a test to make sure they know enough to actually legislate on the bills under their purview.

His being 85 years old is no excuse. I know plenty of people in their mid-80s who not only know how to use their computers and do e-mail, but can even figure out ATM cards at the supermarket checkout line, and have the right time on their VCRs and DVD players.

That he’s a Republican and thus a Moron is a more likely reason.

“Consider an idiot, then consider a Congressman. Ah, but I repeat myself.” — Mark Twain (1876)

“It’s a series of tubes.” Hard to tell if Ted means those tubes in stores which used to convey the cash up to the office and return the change, or the vacuum tubes in old radios and primitive computers.

When I first came to Western Washington University, in 1970, our Sociology/Anthropology department was low on funds (what’s new?) and decided that, in order to continue renting films for classroom use, they’d have to axe our single keyboard connection to the campus IBM 790 computer. Cut off, I seriously considered looking for another job.

As it turned out, I learned far more by walking over to the computer science, math, and physics departments in the building which housed that 790 than by hanging around the department. I’ve always loved computers and computer technology. I loved programming in all forms. When the internet came along I got into that right away. Before graphics were possible I created images in ASCII (e.g.). I loved animation when that became possible. I was the first on my campus to use the internet for courses (posting test results, email with students, e.g.). My “colleagues” used to accuse me, in annual evaluations, of “playing on the internet”, but the Dean of Arts and Sciences released me half time to teach all the academic departments and their administrative assistants how to design webpages. I published a compendium of my research online (in there’s a description of the hopelessly crude methods we were fortunate to use back in the ’70s and somewhat later).

Now that corporations own the media, the internet remains the best hope for Progressives in this country. FWIW, this sixty-six-y/o still finds computers fascinating, and I sincerely the Democrats gain control before the issue of Net Neutrality is decided.

To follow up. Slashdot covered this event as well.

Technically-savvy discussion of Stevens’ inanity:

http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/06/07/03/0643238.shtml

It’s truly frightening that this is the kind of person who is making decisions about the nature of the Internet.

Here’s the full Stevens quote from CB’s link:

There’s one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn’t going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.

We aren’t earning anything by going on that internet. Now I’m not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people […]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says “No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet”. No, I’m not finished. I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time. [?]

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.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can’t afford getting delayed by other people.

[…]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it’s not using what consumers use every day.

It’s not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

LOL. The DoD has their own seperate intranet because that’s the best way they can guarantee the secrecy of their information, and thank goodness they do because otherwise innumerable Russian hackers are waiting in the wings to “hack their Gibson’s”.

I think Senator Stevens wants to use his tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges. Ship the bastard off to Gitmo and waterboard him, let’s get the straight story here!

What a maroon…

In his defense, I do think he was talking about vacuum tubes. And no, his computer isn’t any more modern than his thinking.

I suspect he isn’t speaking of vacuum tubes. It seems like someone tried to explain to him how QOS and/or bandwidth works and used the analogy of stuffing stuff – movies, e-mail – into tubes. So if someone is downloading a large file like a movie then the “tube” isn’t going to be able to fit anymore data into it unless they can use QOS to throttle how much bandwidth is given to the movie so the “internet”/e-mail can get to you faster.

Though I’m kinda impressed in how many different types of “internet” there are according to him.

I was surprised myself to discover that statement about who reads blogs. I don’t remember where I saw it but I suspect it was on a discussion thread at The Next Hurrah or at Political Animal, and within the past 4-6 weeks, since my short term memory looks like swiss cheese out in the sun too long after about six weeks.

Couple of points.

I think that I read the same survey that Tom did and I was initially suprised myself. But if you think about it it makes sense. After all, us somewhat oldsters are from a generation that places a high value on reading.

Also, the term ‘pipe’ is part of the jargon used by computer networking people and designates how much bandwidth a connection will carry. As in ‘the size of the pipe (sometimes it’s the geek equivalent of what do you have under the hood). I could easily see how pipe could be morphed into tube. But as someone who has knowledge in the technical field, Stevens doesn’t know what he’s talking about and made himself sound like an idiot.

Does he worry about electricity leaking out of sockets?

P.S. What does LOL mean?

P.P.S. We have to give it to him, though — he’s creased us up a bit. #17 and #23 were bad news for visibility.

Rian — thanks!