Sen. Ted Stevens once described the internet as a waterpark waterslide

Ahh, yes, the event that spawned a million memes. It is one of the earliest and most-referencedexamples of an old politician trying to wrangle concepts he doesn’t completely comprehend.

Back in 2006, then-Alaskan Sen. Ted Stevens, the then-chair of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, was criticizing a proposed amendment to a net neutrality bill that would restrict major cable companies and internet providers from charging additional fees that companies could pay to give their data higher priority.

“Ten movies streaming across that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet?” Stevens rambled before his words became even more rambly. “I just the other day got an Internet [email] that was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday… Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.”

Then things got very strange. Trying to relate the issue of vast amounts of data slowing internet speeds, Stevens said:

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.

Though the quote isn’t as egregious as those who continue to quote “it’s a series of tubes” might think, it also became a slogan for those arguing for net neutrality. Open internet was the standard in the U.S. for years despite some pushback, up until it wasn’t. While theBiden administration and advocates have continued to champion open internet, big tech has largely dropped the ball, meaning it will take honest thought on behalf of politicians to keep the policy going into the future.