" And again, the Internet is not something that 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." - Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens
He wasn’t necessarily wrong, he was just an asshole. The context for the meme was a speech he gave in vehement opposition to a proposed bill amendment which would have codified net neutrality principles into law. The concept he was blundering through explaining was basically just an eli5 version of limited bandwidth. I send this message (or, in his parlance, this internet) from my phone to Lemmy. It travels through a series of tubes to get there. If the tubes are clogged with traffic, my message might have to get in line. And that’s not fair to people who have the money to not be treated like a poor.
Fun fact, Senator Stevens was the longest serving senator to lose a bid for reelection, largely due the fact that he was embroiled in a big corruption scandal at the time. The conviction ended up being vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct though, and I didn’t care to dive any deeper, but I’m inclined to believe he was a grifter. Rest in piss.
I think he was trying to download something, it was taking time, and he thought the requested files are all in order in “the tubes”.
He had to wait for the other files to be delivered before his arrived.
" And again, the Internet is not something that 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." - Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens
To be fair, at this late date, the tubes analogy isn’t that bad. I forget what point he was trying to make though.
He wasn’t necessarily wrong, he was just an asshole. The context for the meme was a speech he gave in vehement opposition to a proposed bill amendment which would have codified net neutrality principles into law. The concept he was blundering through explaining was basically just an eli5 version of limited bandwidth. I send this message (or, in his parlance, this internet) from my phone to Lemmy. It travels through a series of tubes to get there. If the tubes are clogged with traffic, my message might have to get in line. And that’s not fair to people who have the money to not be treated like a poor.
Fun fact, Senator Stevens was the longest serving senator to lose a bid for reelection, largely due the fact that he was embroiled in a big corruption scandal at the time. The conviction ended up being vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct though, and I didn’t care to dive any deeper, but I’m inclined to believe he was a grifter. Rest in piss.
I think he was trying to download something, it was taking time, and he thought the requested files are all in order in “the tubes”. He had to wait for the other files to be delivered before his arrived.
…or something.