Boy are we in trouble when we’ve got people like Senator Ted Stevens involved in making decisions about technology policy, as evidenced in his brief yet revealing mini-speech on how the internet works, while explaining his opposition to net neutrality.
The page also contains audio, which is even funnier to listen to because you get to hear him bumbling his way through it and get a real sense of just how little he really understands about this. (Almost thought it was Bush when I heard the first few phrases - different voice, same confused presentation style)
Here are some notable highlights:
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.
This one is particularly funny since net neutrality is designed to limit the commercial interests from being able to use a disproportionate share of bandwidth. I’m guessing he got chewed out pretty good by his employers lobbyists after that comment.
They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck. It’s a series of tubes.
Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves. Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it’s not using what consumers use every day.
I’m not sure what’s funnier - his lack of understanding of the technical details, or his attempts to regurgitate what his sponsors have told him in a way that is essentially the exact opposite of what those sponsors are trying to accomplish.
Ironically, in my mind this kind of thing is really the main point against net neutrality legislation, so I guess in a round about way he’s doing what he set out to do. I do agree that it is very troubling to consider that a bunch of guys like this would be crafting a law related to technology like the internet.
What I’d love to see is a pre-voting requirement test, which all the legislators would have to pass and demonstrate an actual understanding of how things like this work before they are allowed to vote on them.
