>The "I invented the Internet" quote is on tape and cannot be explained
>away!!! That is not to say the other's are untrue, but lets stick with the
>facts...
>
>JeffF
Ummm...
No, it isn't. Whoever told you it was is lying to you...
From _Wired_
The Mother of Gore's Invention
by Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
3:00 a.m. Oct. 17, 2000 PDT
WASHINGTON -- If it's true that Al Gore created the Internet, then I
created the "Al Gore created the Internet" story.
I was the first reporter to question the vice president's improvident
boast, way back when he made it in early 1999....
The short answer is that while even his supporters admit the vice
president has an unfortunate tendency to exaggerate, the truth is that
Gore never did claim to have "invented" the Internet.
During a March 1999 CNN interview, while trying to differentiate
himself from rival Bill Bradley, Gore boasted: "During my service in
the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the
Internet."
That statement was enough to convince me, with the encouragement of my
then-editor James Glave, to write a brief article that questioned the
vice president's claim. Republicans on Capitol Hill noticed the Wired
News writeup and started faxing around tongue-in-cheek press releases
-- inveterate neatnik Trent Lott claimed to have invented the paper
clip -- and other journalists picked up the story too.
My article never used the word "invented," but it didn't take long for
Gore's claim to morph into something he never intended.
The terrible irony in this exchange is that while Gore certainly
didn't create the Internet, he was one of the first politicians to
realize that those bearded, bespectacled researchers were busy
crafting something that could, just maybe, become pretty important.
In January 1994, Gore gave a landmark speech at UCLA about the
"information superhighway."
Many portions -- discussions of universal service, wiring classrooms
to the Net, and antitrust actions -- are surprisingly relevant even
today...
It's also true that, as a senator, Gore in the 1980s supported
universities' efforts to increase funding for NSFNet, a measure that
became law in the High Performance Computing Act of 1991. Gore's guest
columns in Byte magazine at the time showed an appreciation of
technology that was far from usual on Capitol Hill.
But it's also difficult to argue with a straight face that the
Internet we know today would not exist if Gore had decided to practice
the piano instead of politics.
By the time Gore took notice of the Net around 1987, the basics were
already in place. The key protocol, TCP/IP, was written and the
culture of the Net had blossomed through Usenet and mailing lists, as
chronicled in Eric Raymond's Jargon File. At best, Gore's involvement
merely hastened its development....
