When the internet doesn't work

For Heidegger, technology becomes transparent to our consciousness when it works as it should. "The tool or equipment -- in use -- becomes the means, not the object, of the experience" (Ihde, 32). Of course, we start to notice technology when it doesn't work right. This may seem obvious, but let us take the internet as an example.

When the internet doesn't work right, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) gets upset, and it is not good to upset senators. He explains the problem "I, just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday."

Later in his speech (which took place in a regulatory meeting about an ISP throttling VOIP packets), he gives his now famous description of 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 those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

So, remember, when the internet is going slow, it's because its tubes are being filled by people who download ten movies.

Thanks, Sen. Stevens, now I know how the internet works.