Totem wrote:
You know, since algore invented the Nobel Peace Prize, it's about time they finally gave him one. Just sayin'.
Totem
Snopes debunks the urban legend that he claims to have invented the internet:
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp
Having trouble copypasting the text for you, but I can get you some of it.
The gist of the article is that Al Gore used an unfortunate phrase to condense his legislative role in making possible the internet in the form that we know it today, to fit into a brief media time-slot, and then the media has extensively misquoted him ever since. He did use the phrase "I took the initiative in creating the internet". There is a crucial difference in the meaning of
creation as opposed to
invention. As far as the
legalities of the situation go, Al Gore DID "create" the internet.
He didn't invent any of the technology, he wrote and tabelled the legislation that permitted and created the original nationwide linkage of all university and library computers. This is one of the major activities that provided one of the major nuclei of the nascent internet. This effect in the creation of the internet was later exponentially grown by later legislation that he was also one of the major players in, which permitted commercial use inside what had been an exclusively academic network.
Quote:
...It is true, though, that Gore was popularizing the term "information superhighway" in the early 1990s (although he did not, as is often claimed by others, coin the phrase himself) when few people outside academia or the computer/defense industries had heard of the Internet, and he sponsored the 1988 National High-Performance Computer Act (which established a national computing plan and helped link universities and libraries via a shared network) and cosponsored the Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992 (which opened the Internet to commercial traffic).
In May 2005, the organizers of the Webby Awards for online achievements honored Al Gore with a lifetime achievement award for three decades of contributions to the Internet. "He is indeed due some thanks and consideration for his early contributions," said Vint Cerf.
The internet was created out of the mass effect of individuals connecting computers worldwide. Legislation was needed governing the permitted usage of government owned or controlled computers, and that at that time those government controlled computers were either a massive block or an outright majority of
1. Existing hard drive space in the world,
2. Existing information loaded into computers,
3. Existing individual computers in the world.
This legislation had a huge real world effect on a process that was going to happen in some way or another. Al Gore was the major driver behind this legislation. If it wasn't for Al Gore, we would have wound up with the internet anyway, but it might not have gotten to it's present form nearly as quickly, or it may have some difference in the form to the one it has today.
He was the Nerd in Congress, and he moved things for all the nerds and technical boffins out there. Then the rest of the public inherited the results.
Edited, Oct 14th 2007 1:39am by Aripyanfar Edited, Oct 14th 2007 2:33am by Aripyanfar
