On Aug 6, 11:39 am, Tim Smith <reply_in_gr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Could someone explain to my just what is wrong with that Senator's
> "tubes" analogy? As Ed Felten noted:
>
> From the lowliest blogger to Jon Stewart, everybody is laughing at
> Sen. Ted Stevens and his remarks on net neutrality. The sound bite
> about the Internet being ³a series of tubes² has come in for for the
> most ridicule.
>
> I¹ll grant that Stevens sounds pretty confused on the recording.
> But¹s let¹s give the guy a break. He was speaking off the cuff in a
> meeting, and he sounds a bit agitated. Have you ever listened to a
> recording of yourself speaking in an unscripted setting? For most
> people, it¹s pretty depressing. We misspeak, drop words, repeat
> phrases, and mangle sentences all the time. Normally, listeners¹
> brains edit out the errors.
>
> In this light, some of the ridicule of Stevens seems a bit unfair.
> He said the Internet is made up of ³tubes². Taken literally, that¹s
> crazy. But experts talk about ³pipes² all the time. Is the gap
> between ³tubes² and ³pipes² really so large? And when Stevens says
> that his staff sent him ³an Internet² and it took several days to
> arrive, it sounds to me like he meant to say ³an email² and just
> misspoke.
>
> Excerpted from <http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1042>.
>
> --
> --Tim Smith
There's nothing wrong with the tubes analogy.
Let's talk about real problems, like corruption of the Senate by big
money.
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