Just when you thought certain members of Congress couldn't stoop any lower in their ambivalence -- when it's not downright antagonism -- towards science, someone manages to plunge just that much deeper into the sea of willful ignorance. This time the issue at stake is net neutrality, a bone of much contention in the House and Senate over the past couple of months.
For all the hullabaloo it's engendered, net neutrality is quite simple: it seeks to protect the fundamental principle of equal access to the Internet. That means, among other things, that big-name broadband carriers can't charge premium fees to deliver, say, VOIP packets faster than emails, or to discriminate against their competitors by delaying delivery of said competitor's VOIP packets. I'm hardly an expert on the issue, but nonetheless feel compelled to echo those who point out that net neutrality has been a founding principle of the Internet since its inception.
Despite my lack of expertise on net neutrality, I still have a pretty decent grasp of how this thing we call the Internet works -- certainly a clearer understanding than one Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), whose muddled comments last week during deliberations by the Senate Commerce Committee have been ricocheting around the ether ever since, subjecting the good senator to considerable derision. We have come to expect a certain amount of tedious pedantry and mangled grammar from our elected representatives, but Stevens' rambling little speech -- an attempt to explain why he was voting against an amendment to insert basic net neutrality provisions into a telecommunications bill under consideration by the Committee -- was downright cringe-inducing.
For starters, apparently Netflix is threatening the security of our nation. Stevens seems to think that all those lazy bums who can't be bothered to walk or drive to their local Blockbuster, and order DVDs online instead, are clogging up the lines, so to speak, so that vital emails between the senator and his staffers are hindered in their delivery. Don't believe me? Permit me to submit an actual quote as evidence: "An Internet was sent by my staff at 10 AM on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially."
The senator is entitled to his opinion on the issue of net neutrality, and to act according to what he deems best for his constituency back home. But if I were a member of that constituency, I'd be deeply worried. I mean, what kind of technological Philistine doesn't know what an email is? And it gets worse. For some reason, Stevens felt compelled to try to explain to his Senate colleagues how the Internet works:
"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. And if you don't understand that 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..."
As a friend of mine is wont to say whenever someone makes similar public gaffes: "Open mouth, insert foot, and vigorously chew." Stevens just couldn't stop chewing. (Jen-Luc Piquant muses that perhaps the nonstop presence of CSPAN cameras in Congress encourages this sort of long-winded scenery chomping.) I assume by "tubes," he's thinking of fiber-optic cables. And those "enormous amounts of material" clogging up the pipes apparently stem from places like Netflix, or perhaps those automatic SPAM mailers that deluge our inboxes with daily solicitations to purchase Viagra or other forms of "enhancement." No wonder it takes forever to show up in my Inbox whenever Jen-Luc emails me the latest blonde jokes or satirical video clips.
Perhaps Stevens' briefing materials were sent via email and got stuck somewhere in the system; he couldn't have mangled things much more if he'd tried. Jen-Luc and I would like to gently call Stevens' attention to another amazing aspect of the Internet: there's these things called Websites, see, and they contain all kinds of useful information, including the details of how the Internet works. In particular, we would steer him towards this handy explanation about packets. There's nifty animated diagrams and everything! True, there's millions of these "Websites" out there, but thanks to tools called "search engines," you can type in a relevant word or phrase and narrow the field considerably. In fact, the good senator should probably just bookmark the most excellent site, How Stuff Works, for future technological reference. I'm sure one of his 20-something staffers could show him how to use the bookmark feature... assuming he can find his browser.
In all seriousness, however, this is not an attempt to take cheap partisan shots. We're fairly apolitical here at Cocktail Party Physics, except when politics impinges on the integrity of science. In the present case, believe me, we would be equally appalled if Stevens were a liberal Democrat. The underlying issue is not net neutrality, but his woeful ignorance about the most commonplace technology. Stevens has presented himself as Exhibit Eight Gazillion and Forty Two for "Why We Need More Science Advisors in Washington." At present we only have one: presidential science advisor John Marburger, who reports to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
True, there's been considerable dissatisfaction within the scientific community as to how Marburger has performed in that position since his appointment, but at least he represents a token attempt to gain some expertise on scientific issues that impact public policy. Congress has no such resource, even in theory -- not since September 1995. That's when our government officially shuttered the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), which had served as an independent, unbiased source of scientific evaluations of emerging technologies and their potential consequences since its establishment in January 1973.
Opinions vary as to what led to the OTA's demise, but a fairly balanced overview can be found here. Some felt OTA was "too partisan" (i.e., favoring Democrats), but mostly, the prevailing sentiment seemed to be that the OTA was expensive and unnecessary. That's a far cry from Congressional attitudes in the 1970s. Back then, our elected representatives appreciated the fact that they were facing all kinds of new technological issues that were highly complex, and required far more expertise than had historically been required for setting national public policy. And they welcomed the input of those with scientific expertise: objective, non-partisan, input, subjected to rigorous peer review to ensure the highest degree of accuracy. That way Congress could make informed decisions about the issues that directly impacted the welfare of our nation.
Those were the Golden Days, in retrospect. Today all we hear about is how arrogant scientists are, with their annoying facts and figures. They have no respect for political agendas and the necessity of "making progress," insisting on pointing out highly inconvenient truths that Congress really doesn't want to hear. True, scientists can be quite arrogant; they also have an irritating habit of often being right, and we ignore them at our peril. Really, who is more arrogant? Scientists who have carefully studied and evaluated every conceivable aspect of a technological issue before drawing conclusions and making recommendations, or Congressional members, who think they can make far-reaching policy decisions without taking advantage of that vast sea of knowledge?
Science still has its champions for the cause in Congress, most notably Vern Ehlers (R-MI) and Rush Holt (D-NJ), the only two PhD physicists currently serving in that august body. In fact, in 2001, Holt tried to introduce legislation to re-establish the OTA, garnering quite a few co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle. But the noble effort eventually fizzled, and Congress remains unencumbered by the inconvenience of scientific expertise -- ergo, we get embarrassing performances like that of Stevens during the Senate net neutrality debate.
The scientific community, over the last decade, has heroically tried to make itself heard on the Hill, through programs like the Congressional Fellowships sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or by organizing grassroots letter-writing campaigns and arranging for scientists to personally visit their representatives. We live in an era of unprecendented technological advancement, and science will continue to impact issues of paramount important to US interests. Scientists represent a massive untapped resource of information that is vital to protecting public health, maintaining national security, you name it. No one can be an expert in everything, and wise people know when to seek out (and follow!) informed advice. Senator Stevens, I beg of you: hire a AAAS Congressional Science Fellow, pronto. It could end up being the best investment your office ever made.
The good senator's remarks are just too funny. BTW, Chris Mooney wrote a good article about the demise of the OTA for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last year, it's online at: http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so05mooney
Posted by: Brett | July 02, 2006 at 02:22 AM
I can't see the comments as funny. My mother is 64 and my father is 73, and they could comment much more coherently about the internet. Not that they know so much about routers, packets, or what have you, but to refer to an email as an internet is bizarre. My father never used email in his professional life, and yet was forced to gain some familiarity with it because that's how our culture is doing things these days.
A senator who doesn't know even the basic vocabulary on how most of the world goes about its day is disgraceful -- especially if he plans to legislate about it. If he'd misapprehended some other aspect of our culture that badly while commenting on his pending governance how would it sound?
"A staffer of mine was, just yesterday, talking to an armored personnel carrier who said how tiring it was to carry all those armored personnels around. So I support the proposed legislation to fund some more of them."
My gasters are flabbered, to say the least.
msd
Posted by: Matt | July 03, 2006 at 11:30 AM
I could rant about how we let the most willfully ignorant people define the terms of debate, but instead I'll just link to a comic strip:
http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive.php?s=1525
Posted by: Blake Stacey | July 06, 2006 at 02:02 PM
Ugh... sometimes it's very embarrassing to be from Alaska. Lately, most of those embarrassing moments originate with Ted Stevens (bridge to nowhere, anyone?)
Posted by: Jessica | July 06, 2006 at 02:05 PM