Series of tubes

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's seemingly poor understanding of the Internet) despite Stevens making several other odd comparisons and references.

Partial text of Stevens's comments

Ten movies streaming across that, 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, I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially. [...] 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 big 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 it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

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's 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's 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

Stevens's speech was also ridiculed on five episodes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart which featured clips of Stevens's speech. In the first instance, 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."

On July 19, 2006, The Daily Show again addressed Stevens's concept, this time featuring John Hodgman's faux-expert criticism of the tubes metaphor.

Stevens's "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's 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 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?"

On December 18, 2006, host Jon Stewart, in an interview with Presidential candidate Tom Vilsack, referenced the quote while plugging Vilsack's website, stating "Is that one of them (sic) Internets? ... Go visit him on the series of tubes."

Gears of War

Additionally, the phrase pops up as a joke in the Xbox 360 game Gears of War] as an unlockable achievement. To unlock the "A Series of Tubes" achievement, one must play 100 ranked matches.

Defense of terminology

Stevens's speech was notably defended by Edward Felten, who said that he disagreed with Stevens's 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 defend 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 a bandwidth-limited data connection is a "pipe".

See also

• Pneumatic tubes were a once-popular system of message transport. They were rapid but service rapidly deteriorated when the tubes were overused.
• Speaking tubes were a more primitive method to transmit speech to persons otherwise out of earshot.

External links

• Public Knowledge recounts how the meme began and spread
• Senator Stevens is Not As Dumb as He Sounds, a defense by Lew Rockwell
• New York Times: Senator’s Slip of the Tongue Keeps on Truckin’ Over the Web
• this WEEK in TECH podcast talking about net neutrality and the series of tubes
• A Ted Stevens/"Series of Tubes" parody site
• How Internet Infrastructure Works