In an impressive white-knuckle performance on live television today, members of Congress spent several hours in a hearing room pretending to understand the Internet. Beginning this morning, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee devoted four hours to grilling Web-site contractors about site architecture, Web traffic, software, and other I.T. concepts about which their ignorance is nearly complete. As members of this committee, we are supposed to have a deep understanding of the technology involved in the health-care Web site, said Chairman Fred Upton (R-Michigan). So it was absolutely imperative for us to fake that we do. For the duration of the hearings, the Web contractors offered detailed testimony about end-to-end testing, enterprise identity management, and other technical concepts to a group of elected officials who can barely use e-mail. I would say that, to a man, we did not understand ninety-nine per cent of that computer nonsense they were going on about, Chairman Upton said. To me it was a whole lot of blahbitty-blahbitty-blah. I hope it wasnt too obvious. Rep. Upton said that looking serious and nodding our heads a lot contributed to the illusion that committee members had even scant comprehension of what was being discussed. At the end of the day, a lot of it came down to not asking the questions you really wanted to ask, he said. Like, What exactly is a Web site? 