Bill King <bk0413 at insightbb.com> wrote: > What seems to be a fairly good discussion of Al Gore and his "invention of > the internet" can be found at > http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/
Whew! I condensed it to this: "Gore did indeed take an intellectual and legislative interest in promoting high-speed data networks in the United States, and he did this during the 1980s, at a time long before most members of the public - let alone most politicians - were thinking about such issues ... Gore's interest and support for U.S. high-speed networking begins much earlier than 1989. As early as 1986, Gore called for, in the context of funding for the NSF, support for basic research in computer networking... That Gore wrote about a national "data highway" as far back as 1986 is extremely significant .... (he made a) contemporaneous insertion into the Congressional Record (in a ) floor debate...In order for Gore to make this kind of speech in 1986, he had to have been conversant with the thinking of computer scientists and Internet pioneers ... In 1988, Gore argued (in the Congressional Record) for the creation of a high-capacity national data network ... In a 1989 floor debate Gore continued his support for federally funded research in high-performance computing and networking. His words presage the Internet as we know it today ... During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the term "information superhighway" became a sort of mantra in Gore's speeches." How hurt he must be to have his early vision of the Internet used against him, to become a laughing stock for helping bring us what we now take for granted. Allan Atherton | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be March 25. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>.
