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"Series of Tubes" Metaphor Implemented
meisteg writes to tell us about Tubes: a beta application that uses a tube metaphor to enable users to share files over the Internet. The Windows-only app is free and the company hopes to make money on an enhanced version targeted at businesses. See this video for some details of how Tubes works. From the article: "[Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens] endured ridicule last year for his assertion that the Internet is 'a series of tubes.' But one Web startup hopes to bring that metaphor to life with a new service that makes it easy for people to share videos, songs, pictures and other big files."
Doesn't Bittorrent do this already?
Nice description. It reminded me of an old description I shamelessly copied from somewhere long ago and forgot the source. If anyone knows, I'd love to give proper attribution:
"Think of the Internet as a highway."
There it is again. Some clueless fool talking about the "Information Superhighway." They don't know anything about the 'net. It's nothing like a superhighway. What a rotten metaphor.
Suppose the metaphor ran the other way. Suppose highways were like the 'net.
A highway hundreds of lanes wide, most with pitfalls for potholes. Privately operated bridges and overpasses. No highway patrol, save for a couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken whistles. Five hundred member vigilante posses with nuclear weapons. A minimum of 237 on-ramps at every intersection.
No Signs. Want to get to Ensenada? Holler out the window at a passing truck and ask for directions. Ad hoc traffic laws. Some lanes would vote to make use by a single-occupant vehicle a capitol offense on Monday through Friday between 7:00am and 9:00pm. Other lanes would just shoot you without a trial for talking on a car phone.
America Online would be a giant diesel-smoking bus filled with hundreds of Ebola victims on board throwing dead wombats and rotten cabbage at the other cars, most of which have been assembled from kits. Some are built around 2.5 horsepower lawnmower engines with a top speed of 9 miles per hour. Others burn nitroglycerine and idle at 120. No license plates. World War II bomber nose art instead. Terrifying paintings of huge teeth or vampire eagles. Bumper mounted machine guns. Flip somebody the finger and get a white phosphorus grenade up your tailpipe. Flatbed trucks cruise around with anti-aircraft missile batteries to shoot down the traffic helicopter. Little kids on tricycles with squirtguns filled with hydrochloric acid switch lanes without warning.
Welcome to the Internet.