 | 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 [Tuesday]. 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 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. |
Sen. Ted Stevens who died in a plane crash last Monday is known, among other things, for having coined the phrase “a series of tubes”
“The internet is a series of tubes!” This was the gaffe heard round the ‘net, igniting a response that spanned every news outlet from Fark to the New York Times. The phrase became a badge of pride. Stevens’s quote showed up on the Colbert Report and the Daily Show. Experts confirmed it. People remixed his speech. The “tubes” even have their own Wikipedia page. Google briefly incorporated them into a program as an easter egg. They took on a life of their own, ensconcing themselves in online lore. The Internet was not a big truck! It was a series of tubes! And it was proud. (more)
• Aug 12, 2010 link notes tagged: technology metaphor tube medium media Internet container content representation analogy form epistemology communication
