Hmm. Am I the only one who sees nothing wrong with seeing 'Internet' as a series of tubes? At each network layer, there are features (cables, queues) that can be explained as 'tubes' after all. Does every US senator, like Ted Stevens, need to know exactly what and how Internet works or is metaphoric understanding enough? Isn't his understanding of the Internet at least better than those who sees Internet Explorer icon as the Internet?

I think Ted probably just asked an aid for explanations of how the Internet worked and the aid probably resorted to using tubes to explain. If your 80 year old grandmother asked you what the Internet was, how would you answer her? Bring up the OSI network model diagram? How would you explain when a message to her took 24 hours to arrive?

Maybe all this is because Ted is against net neutrality and a republican. Ridiculing seems to be a social grouping ritual of sort. Even at kindergarten, ridiculing and echos in agreement defines the outline of a group. Natural or not, I don't like such behaviors although I might have done my share of ridiculing in the past.

Oy. It's so hard to be objective.