Ted Stevens Explains The Internets – NOW WITH POWERPOINT!

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) made a hysterical attempt to explain how the internet works on the Senate floor. Needless to say, Sen. Stevens probably doesn’t have much of a career as a network engineer. Of course, his level of technological illiteracy is probably par for the course in Congress.

The whole issue of “network neutrality” is a bit of tempest in a teapot – when you have great technical minds like Sen. Stevens trying to regulate a system they don’t even remotely understand, the results will obviously not be good. The Internet has thrived because of a lack of overall regulation, and the best way of settling these issues is not with another network of poorly-written red tape, but by letting the market decide how best to settle the issue. That’s the way the Internet grew and developed, and that’s the way it will continue to do so.

UPDATE: Despite the fact that I think PowerPoint is a greater tool for evil than weaponized anthrax or SpiceWorld, Meryl Yourish has created an absolutely brilliant PowerPoint parody of Stevens’ comments that simply must be seen. Clip art has never been so funny – at least not so intentionally funny.