But I thought it was a "Series of Tubes"?

Here's a great essay by Bob Frankston on howutilizing the Internet design approach of intelligent end-points and a dumb network couldbeapplied to other engineering challenges: The Internet as Design Principle.

Of course, it seems that the "dumb network" approach is being phased out in favor of closed network designs that offer the carrier additional revenue opportunities at the expense of the opportunity for innovation by the end-user, but nevertheless, the design principles that the Internet is based upon are still valid, and still can apply to other systems.