Season Liberally

(And "Tivo" is NOT your Italian waiter...)

The other day Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) tried to explain how the internet gets "clogged." In the process of this mind-bending explanation he asked "...an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?" He went on to define what the internet really was ("It's a series of tubes") and in the process revealed that he fits firmly in with others of our leaders who Haven't Got a Friggin' Clue: President Bush, who famously stated "I hear there's rumors on the Internets that we're going to have a draft," and Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), who once referred to an e-mail as a "computer letter."

This would all just be a silly interlude if not for the fact that these are the people who are in charge of crafting laws and policies dealing with the Internet and Net Neutrality. Now, you might say "Lighten up--their staff people will explain it to them," but any staff person who would allow their boss to go out in public and spew the gobbledygook that came out of Stevens' mouth is not to be trusted. Besides, how do we know they didn't already explain it, and that's just how Stevens' brain translated it? Truly frightening.

Sometime in the mid-nineties, when I was in the process of finishing up my M.A., a professor told us (in a seminar on research methods) that if we really needed more information, the best place to get it was "in the card catalog in the library." None of us wanted to tell him that the card catalog had gone the way of the Dodo by then, and that everything had been moved to databases on computers. But we did. He was shocked and dismayed (and retired soon afterwards).

One can only hope that some of our more Luddite congresscritters follow suit.

I think the thing that really shocked us about our professor's comment on card catalogs was that it was obvious that he hadn't set foot in the library in many moons. Maybe he felt that he'd learned all there was to know, and that he needn't keep up with new technologies or methods. Perhaps he was scared, as many of our older teachers and returning students were, of learning how to use a computer (I knew a couple of people who were convinced that if they even touched a key, they'd "break the Internet"). But those who were brave enough to try, to make mistakes, to learn new things, had doors opened to new worlds of research and information. It was a revelation for them, and once initiated to the mysteries of the Internets, they stayed with it, and many of them are now experts that others turn to for help. You're never too old to learn new things...but if you refuse to even TRY, then yes, please retire. I'm talking to you, Senator Stevens.

For a complete transcript of Senator Stevens' remarks and a link to the audio clip, click here.