"A series of tubes" is a phrase coined originally as an analogy by then-United
States Senator Ted Stevens to describe the Internet in the context of opposing
network neutrality. On June 28, 2006, he used this metaphor to criticize a
proposed amendment to a committee bill. The amendment would have prohibited
Internet Access providers such as AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon
Communications from charging fees to give some companies' data a higher
priority in relation to other traffic. The metaphor has been widely ridiculed,
particularly because Stevens displayed a limited understanding of the Internet,
even though he was in charge of regulating it. Edward Felten, Princeton
University professor of computer science, pointed out the unfairness of
some criticisms of Stevens' wording, while maintaining that the underlying
arguments were rather weak. Partial text of Stevens' comments
Media commentary On June 28, 2006, Public Knowledge
government affairs manager Alex Curtis wrote a brief blog entry introducing the
senator's speech and posted an MP3 recording. The next day, the Wired
magazine blog 27B Stroke 6 featured a lengthier post by Ryan Singel, which
included Singel's transcriptions of some parts of Stevens' speech considered the
most humorous. Within days, thousands of other blogs and message boards posted
the story. Most writers and commentators derisively
cited several of Stevens' misunderstandings of Internet
technology, arguing that the speech showed that he had formed a strong
opinion on a topic which he understood poorly. The story sparked mainstream
media attention, including a mention in the New York Times. The technology
podcast This Week in Tech discussed the incident.
According to The Wall Street Journal, as summarized by MediaPost commentator Ross
Fadner: Related nomenclature
The term pipe is a commonly used idiom to refer to a data connection, with pipe
diameter being analogous to bandwidth or throughput. For instance, high-bandwidth
connections are often referred to as "fat pipes".
Pop culture references The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has made
multiple references to "Techno" Ted Stevens's "series of tubes" description;
as a result, Stevens has become well known as the person who once headed the
committee charged with regulating the Internet. "I have a letter from a big
scientist who said I was absolutely right in using the word 'tubes',"
Stevens said to reporters in response to The Daily Show's coverage. When asked if
he'd think about going on the show to debate Jon Stewart, Stevens replied,
"I'd consider it." In the keynote speech at the 2007 Penny
Arcade Expo, Wil Wheaton spoke about remembering when the Internet was more
like a truck than a series of tubes. Grand Theft Auto V features an in-game
web browser named Eyefind, the header for which reads "--- EYEFIND... It's
like a series of tubes ---" Google has included references to this
in two of its products. Gears' about box says "the gears that power the tubes"
and Google Chrome had an about: easter egg at the address about:internets which
displayed a screensaver of tubes with the page title "Don't Clog the Tubes!"
When "about:internets" was entered on a computer lacking that screensaver, the
tab displayed a gray screen with the page title "The Tubes are Clogged!" This
easter egg was removed as of the 2.0.159.1 release. The documentation for
developing Chrome extensions includes a near-verbatim quote of the "series of
tubes" paragraph when describing its chrome.storage class.
The comments made by Ted Stevens are frequently used in Ventrilo Harassment
videos on YouTube and other video sharing websites.
The video game Destiny has a mission called A Series of tubes in which the
player must access information in defense network.
Tribute Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post
wrote a humorous article entitled "Sen. Stevens, the tubes salute you" after
Stevens died in an airplane crash August 9, 2010:
And as people remember him, make ill-timed jests, and muse on his
legacy—all in real time, in great profusion—I worry that they are
disrupting the ability of people elsewhere to receive their Internets.
But for us in the Facebook generation who weren't around for the first plane
crash and know the Bridge to Nowhere primarily as an SNL punchline, the
senator's legacy is in that series of tubes.
The "Bridge to Nowhere" refers to the Gravina Island Bridge, another issue
Stevens was responsible for, for which he was also mocked.
See also References
External links Schneider, Tim. "Mr. Stevens's wild ride
through a 'series of tubes'". Public Knowledge.
Belson, Ken. "Senator’s Slip of the Tongue Keeps on Truckin’ Over the Web".
The New York Times. This WEEK in TECH podcast talking about
net neutrality and the series of tubes Recommended in Scientific American:
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet by Andrew Blum, 2012