In my career as an IT professional, I’ve heard the following comments (all true, by the way):

• “The internet is slow.” - Wow, the whole thing? Not just our connection to it?
• “I need a big hard drive, ’cause I want to download the internet.” - Yes. You do. Its nice to know someone is backing it up though.
• “Maybe I need more memory if I’m going to get on the internet.” - You won’t have to remember everything you see on the internet. Besides, the majority of it is junk anyway.
• “Can you check and see if the internet is up?” - I can, but it’ll take some time.
• “Does my computer have internet?” - Technically, that’s not even a question.
• “I downloaded it from the internets.” - Woah! There are more than one? You mean Internet2 really did take off?

At my office, we got so sick of answering questions about the internet. At the same time, I can understand why some people would have a problem with this. Its not like you can “see” the internet itself. Its a virtual concept that’s really hard to wrap your head around. And, there are so many pieces of “the internet” that its hard for people to understand how it works. So, we decided to help them out.

We went into our Research and Design Lab and pulled out a very old piece of equipment, dusted it off and repurposed it as a visual description of the internet:

And yes, from the looks of things, the internet is slow.