Ah s**t, I should have just kept my mouth shut (or I guess hands off the keyboard). Really haven't got time for this, but frustration with spin and political manipulation got the best of me, so I guess I put myself into a position where I owe those who want it further information.<br /><br />What will be interesting is to see if detailed information has any effect on the opinions of those of you who currently have a "firmly fixed understanding" that may be based more on spin, sound bites, and brilliant political maneuvering than on facts. <br /><br />Following are some references with excerpts I copied from the articles. Although the excerpts are intended to give a decent flavor of each article, I'd suggest you read the entire article so as to eliminate any chance of bias on my part in what I copied.<br /><br />__________________________________________________<br />First, from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/ : what Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf, who are credited as probably being the key individuals behind development of the technical aspects of the internet had to say about Gore. More from this website later.<br /> <br />On September 28, 2000, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf released a statement to key Internet mailing lists stating their unequivocal belief that Gore played an important role during his congressional years in supporting the Internet: <br /><br />I am taking the liberty of sending to you both a brief summary of Al Gore's Internet involvement, prepared by Bob Kahn and me. As you know, there have been a seemingly unending series of jokes chiding the vice president for his assertion that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet." <br /><br />Bob and I believe that the vice president deserves significant credit for his early recognition of the importance of what has become the Internet. <br /><br />I thought you might find this short summary of sufficient interest to share it with Politech and the IP lists, respectively. <br /><br />============================================================== <br /><br />Al Gore and the Internet <br /><br />By Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf <br /><br />Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.<br /><br />No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time. <br /><br />Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective. <br /><br />As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises. <br /><br />As a Senator in the 1980s Gore urged government agencies to consolidate what at the time were several dozen different and unconnected networks into an "Interagency Network." Working in a bi-partisan manner with officials in Ronald Reagan and George Bush's administrations, Gore secured the passage of the High Performance Computing and Communications Act in 1991. This "Gore Act" supported the National Research and Education Network (NREN) initiative that became one of the major vehicles for the spread of the Internet beyond the field of computer science. <br /><br />As Vice President Gore promoted building the Internet both up and out, as well as releasing the Internet from the control of the government agencies that spawned it. He served as the major administration proponent for continued investment in advanced computing and networking and private sector initiatives such as Net Day. He was and is a strong proponent of extending access to the network to schools and libraries. Today, approximately 95% of our nation's schools are on the Internet. Gore provided much-needed political support for the speedy privatization of the Internet when the time arrived for it to become a commercially-driven operation. <br /><br />There are many factors that have contributed to the Internet's rapid growth since the later 1980s, not the least of which has been political support for its privatization and continued support for research in advanced networking technology. No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President. Gore has been a clear champion of this effort, both in the councils of government and with the public at large. <br /><br />The Vice President deserves credit for his early recognition of high speed computing and communication and for his long-term and consistent articulation of the potential value of the Internet to American citizens and industry and, indeed, to the rest of the world.<br />__________________________________________________<br /><br /><br />Second, let's go to Snopes.com, host of the Urban Legends Reference Pages. I think most would agree that this is an unbiased source with no political agenda.<br /><br /> http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp <br /><br /> Internet of Lies <br /><br />Claim: Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the Internet. <br /><br />Status: False. <br /><br />Origins: Despite the derisive references that continue even today, Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The "Al Gore said he 'invented' the Internet" put-downs were misleading, out-of-context distortions of something he said during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition" program on 9 March 1999. When asked to describe what distinguished him from his challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gore replied (in part):<br /><br /> "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system. " <br /> <br />Clearly, although Gore's phrasing was clumsy (and perhaps self-serving), he was not claiming that he "invented" the Internet (in the sense of having designed or implemented it), but that he was responsible, in an economic and legislative sense, for fostering the development the technology that we now know as the Internet. To claim that Gore was seriously trying to take credit for the "invention" of the Internet is, frankly, just silly political posturing that arose out of a close presidential campaign. Gore never used the word "invent," and the words "create" and "invent" have distinctly different meanings the former is used in the sense of "to bring about" or "to bring into existence" while the latter is generally used to signify the first instance of someone's thinking up or implementing an idea.....<br /><br />Whether Gore's statement that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet" is justified is a subject of debate. Any statement about the "creation" or "beginning" of the Internet is difficult to evaluate, because the Internet is not a homogenous entity (it's a collection of computers, networks, protocols, standards, and application programs), nor did it all spring into being at once.....<br /><br />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). <br /><br />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. <br />__________________________________________________<br /><br />From Saloon.com<br /> http://www.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2000/10/05/gore_internet/ <br /><br /> Did Gore invent the Internet? <br />Actually, the vice president never claimed to have done so -- but he did help the Net along. Some people would rather forget that<br /><br />...And the "Gore claims he invented the Net" trope is so full of holes that it makes you wish there were product recalls for bad information. <br /><br />Gore never claimed to have "invented" the Internet. What he said was: <br /><br />During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet. <br /><br />As my colleague Jake Tapper carefully reported here last year, at worst that statement is a minor exaggeration of Gore's legislative record -- and miles away from the "I built it from scratch!" lie into which it has been twisted. <br /><br />...Several of the people who could claim to have "invented" the Internet, or key pieces of its protocols -- in particular, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn -- are out there on the Net today defending Gore, asserting that he was the politician in Washington who took the "initiative" to support the Net in its early days. <br /><br />...It took social engineers as well as software engineers to build the Net. And that may be why the response to Gore's original statement was so savage: Not because his claim was a lie, but because it was a truth that a lot of people today are trying to forget or bury. <br /><br />...Government alone couldn't have built today's Internet, but private industry, left to its own devices, wouldn't have, either. Without the critical spark of government-funded research lighting a fire of networked inventiveness, we'd probably have been stuck with the morass of competing proprietary online spaces that vied for the consumer's dollars in the early 1990s -- when AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve, the prototypical MSN and other long-forgotten entrants like AT&T's Interchange and Apple's E-world all stared at each other across unbridgeable technological and business divides. <br /><br />...But the defense of Gore currently underway feels to me less like a party-line effort than like the repayment of a debt of gratitude by Internet pioneers who feel that Gore is being unfairly smeared. <br /><br />That's what you'll hear from Phillip Hallam-Baker, a former member of the CERN Web development team that created the basic structure of the World Wide Web. Hallam-Baker calls the campaign to tar Gore as a delusional Internet inventor "a calculated piece of political propaganda to deny Gore credit for what is probably his biggest achievement." <br /><br />"In the early days of the Web," says Hallam-Baker, who was there, "he was a believer, not after the fact when our success was already established -- he gave us help when it counted. He got us the funding to set up at MIT after we got kicked out of CERN for being too successful. He also personally saw to it that the entire federal government set up Web sites. Before the White House site went online, he would show the prototype to each agency director who came into his office. At the end he would click on the link to their agency site. If it returned 'Not Found' the said director got a powerful message that he better have a Web site before he next saw the veep." <br /><br />That sounds like a pretty good description of the kind of "initiative" Gore claimed credit for in the first place. So the next time you hear an "Al Gore, Internet inventor" joke, think about the strange twisted path a politician's words can take in other people's hands -- and be glad we can use the Internet to try to straighten it out.<br />__________________________________________________<br /><br />from firstmonday.org<br /> http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/ <br />excerpts:<br /><br />....A cynic might observe that "creating the Internet" and "inventing the Internet" are tantamount to the same exaggeration. But let's look at the entire quote in the context of the colloquy with Blitzer. Here is Blitzer's entire query to Gore: <br /><br />BLITZER: I want to get to some of the substance of domestic and international issues in a minute, but let's just wrap up a little bit of the politics right now. <br />Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley, a friend of yours, a former colleague in the Senate? What do you have to bring to this that he doesn't necessarily bring to this process?<br /><br />Clearly, Blitzer is asking Gore to offer an explanation of how he differs as a politician from other politicians in general, and his rival at the time, Bill Bradley, in particular. Here is Gore's entire response to Blitzer's question: <br /><br />GORE: Well, I will be offering - I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. <br />But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system. <br /><br />During a quarter century of public service, including most of it long before I came into my current job, I have worked to try to improve the quality of life in our country and in our world. And what I've seen during that experience is an emerging future that's very exciting, about which I'm very optimistic, and toward which I want to lead.<br /><br />Here Gore appears to have been caught off guard a bit by the question, rambling a bit as he seeks to vocalize a responsive answer. He emphasizes his work during his years in the Congress - Gore served in the House and later the Senate - as well as his leadership on various issues. Perhaps not showing the most elegant variation in words, he mentions "initiative" three times. Clearly his overall message is that he worked hard on a number of issues, and took a leadership position relative to others - presumably including his rival Bradley. The overall thrust is that Gore paints himself as a forward-looking legislator and political leader. <br /><br />...We have seen that Internet history cannot be easily summarized; there is no one single moment of discovery or invention. Press reports that claim the "Internet was invented in 1969" simply are not accurate; the term "internet" had not yet been coined. The most accurate summary would avoid use of the word "invent" altogether, as the Internet is not a single technology or device. One might date the birth of the Internet to the 1970s, when Kahn and Cerf began research on the Internet Protocol, or the 1980s, when it came into widespread use. But as the timeline shows, the basic underlying ideas date back as far as the early 1960s. <br /><br />Clearly, then, if we take Gore literally at his word, he could not have "taken the initiative in creating the Internet." As the ARPANET moved from research to deployment, Gore was finishing college and serving in the Army in Vietnam. From 1976 to 1985, Gore served in the House of Representatives. From 1985 to 1992, he served in the Senate. The record shows that his interest in national computer networking issues became acute during his years in the Senate - when the Internet clearly was fully in operation. <br /><br />So let us grant to Gore's critics that he was in no position to "take the initiative in creating the Internet." But is it possible that Gore's declaration, chosen in real time during a live-on-tape interview, could be simply a poor choice of words - sloppy speaking on his part - and that a slightly different formulation might be quite reasonably interpreted as totally accurate? <br /><br />...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: <br /> <br />MR. PRESIDENT, IT GIVES ME GREAT PLEASURE TO SUPPORT THE PROPOSED NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION AUTHORIZATION ACT. <br /><br />WITHIN THIS BILL I HAVE TWO AMENDMENTS, THE COMPUTER NETWORK STUDY AND THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT REPORT. THE FIRST AMENDMENT WAS ORIGINALLY INTRODUCED WITH SENATOR GORTON AS S. 2594. IT CALLS FOR A 2-YEAR STUDY OF THE CRITICAL PROBLEMS AND CURRENT AND FUTURE OPTIONS REGARDING COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS FOR RESEARCH COMPUTERS. ... <br /><br />BOTH OF THESE AMENDMENTS SEEK NEW INFORMATION ON CRITICAL PROBLEMS OF TODAY. THE COMPUTER NETWORK STUDY ACT IS DESIGNED TO ANSWER CRITICAL QUESTIONS ON THE NEEDS OF COMPUTER TELECOMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS OVER THE NEXT 15 YEARS. FOR EXAMPLE, WHAT ARE THE FUTURE REQUIREMENTS FOR COMPUTERS IN TERMS OF QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF DATA TRANSMISSION, DATA SECURITY, AND SOFTWEAR [sic] COMPATIBILITY? WHAT EQUIPMENT MUST BE DEVELOPED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE HIGH TRANSMISSION RATES OFFERED BY FIBER OPTIC SYSTEMS? <br /><br />BOTH SYSTEMS DESIGNED TO HANDLE THE SPECIAL NEEDS OF SUPERCOMPUTERS AND SYSTEMS DESIGNED TO MEET THE NEEDS OF SMALLER RESEARCH COMPUTERS WILL BE EVALUATED. THE EMPHASIS IS ON RESEARCH COMPUTERS, BUT THE USERS OF ALL COMPUTERS WILL BENEFIT FROM THIS STUDY. TODAY, WE CAN BANK BY COMPUTER, SHOP BY COMPUTER, AND SEND LETTERS BY COMPUTER. ONLY A FEW COMPANIES AND INDIVIDUALS USE THESE SERVICES, BUT THE NUMBER IS GROWING AND EXISTING CAPABILITIES ARE LIMITED. <br /><br />IN ORDER TO COPE WITH THE EXPLOSION OF COMPUTER USE IN THE COUNTRY, WE MUST LOOK TO NEW WAYS TO ADVANCE THE STATE-OF-THE-ART IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS -- NEW WAYS TO INCREASE THE SPEED AND QUALITY OF THE DATA TRANSMISSION. WITHOUT THESE IMPROVEMENTS, THE TELECOMMUNICATION NETWORKS FACE DATA BOTTLENECKS LIKE THOSE WE FACE EVERY DAY ON OUR CROWDED HIGHWAYS. <br /><br />THE PRIVATE SECTOR IS ALREADY AWARE OF THE NEED TO EVALUATE AND ADOPT NEW TECHNOLOGIES. ONE PROMISING TECHNOLOGY IS THE DEVELOPMENT OF FIBER OPTIC SYSTEMS FOR VOICE AND DATA TRANSMISSION. EVENTUALLY WE WILL SEE A SYSTEM OF FIBER OPTIC SYSTEMS BEING INSTALLED NATIONWIDE. <br /><br />AMERICA'S HIGHWAYS TRANSPORT PEOPLE AND MATERIALS ACROSS THE COUNTRY. FEDERAL FREEWAYS CONNECT WITH STATE HIGHWAYS WHICH CONNECT IN TURN WITH COUNTY ROADS AND CITY STREETS. TO TRANSPORT DATA AND IDEAS, WE WILL NEED A TELECOMMUNICATIONS HIGHWAY CONNECTING USERS COAST TO COAST, STATE TO STATE, CITY TO CITY. THE STUDY REQUIRED IN THIS AMENDMENT WILL IDENTIFY THE PROBLEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES THE NATION WILL FACE IN ESTABLISHING THAT HIGHWAY.<br />[Upper case shown, indicating a contemporaneous insertion into the Congressional Record at the time of corresponding floor debate.]<br /><br />That Gore wrote about a national "data highway" as far back as 1986 is extremely significant. It is important to make clear the context of the state of computing at that time. The IBM PC was only four years old. The Apple II computer was still in widespread use. The number of hosts on the Internet numbered, as counted by Mark Lottor's Internet Domain Survey, was 5,089. Entire universities (such as Michigan State University) made their initial connection to the Internet in 1986. 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. Such pioneers included such as Vint Cerf, Steven Wolf, and Larry Smarr - then director of the National Center for Supercomputer Applications at the University of Illinois (NCSA), where Mosaic would be born some seven years later. <br /><br />In 1988, Gore argued for the creation of a high-capacity national data network: <br /><br /><br />THIS LEGISLATION TAKES THE FIRST CRITICAL STEPS TO ADDRESS THOROUGHLY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S ROLE IN PROMOTING HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING. OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL MONTHS, WE CAN REFINE THIS LEGISLATION. BUT WE MUST ACT. THE UNITED STATES HAS MAYBE A 1-YEAR LEAD OVER OUR CLOSEST COMPETITORS IN THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING FIELD. WE CANNOT AFFORD TO HESITATE IN CRAFTING A BLUEPRINT TO ENSURE THAT LEAD FOR THE [*S16898] NEXT DOZEN YEARS OF THIS CENTURY AND TO POSITION OURSELVES FOR THE NEXT CENTURY. REPRESENTATIVES FROM INDUSTRY, ACADEMIA, AND FEDERAL AGENCIES SHOULD DISCUSS WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE, USING THIS BILL AS A FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION. <br />THE NATIONAL HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY ACT OF 1988 WOULD EXPAND AND IMPROVE FEDERAL SUPPORT FOR RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND THE APPLICATION OF HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY. SPECIFICALLY, THIS ACT WOULD ESTABLISH A HIGH-CAPACITY NATIONAL RESEARCH COMPUTER NETWORK, DEVELOP AND DISTRIBUTE SOFTWARE, DEVELOP ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE PROGRAMS, STIMULATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF HARDWARE, AND INVEST IN BASIC RESEARCH AND EDUCATION. <br /><br />THE ACT WOULD DEFINE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S ROLE IN HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING. THE ACT WOULD PROVIDE FOR A 3-GIGABIT-PER-SECOND NATIONAL NETWORK, DEVELOP FEDERAL STANDARDS, TAKE INTO ACCOUNT USER VIEWS, EXAMINE TELECOMMUNICATIONS POLICY, BUILD AN INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE COMPOSED OF DATA BASES AND KNOWLEDGE BANKS, CREATE A NATIONAL SOFTWARE CORPORATION TO DEVELOP IMPORTANT SOFTWARE PROGRAMS, ESTABLISH A CLEARINGHOUSE TO VALIDATE AND DISTRIBUTE SOFTWARE, PROMOTE ARTICIFIAL INTELLIGENCE DATA BASES, INCREASE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS, STUDY EXPORT CONTROLS AFFECTING COMPUTERS, REVIEW PROCUREMENT POLICIES TO STIMULATE THE COMPUTER INDUSTRY, AND ENHANCE COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS. IT ALSO CLEARLY DEFINES AGENCY MISSIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES WITH RESPECT TO HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING.<br /><br />Gore made explicit the need for high-speed networking, specifically a 3-gigabit per second national network. In 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: <br /><br />"Well, we could do more and we should be doing more. I'd take a slightly different view of this question. I agree totally with those who say, education is the key to it. But I genuinely believe that the creation of this nationwide network and the broader installation of lower capacity fiber optic cables to all parts of this country, will create an environment where work stations are common in homes and even small businesses with access to supercomputing capability being very, very widespread. It's sort of like, once the interstate highway system existed, then a college student in California who lived in North Carolina would be more likely to buy a car, drive back and forth instead of taking the bus. Once that network for supercomputing is in place, you're going to have a lot more people gaining access to the capability, developing an interest in it. That will lead to more people getting training and more purchases of machines."<br /><br />During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the term "information superhighway" became a sort of mantra in Gore's speeches. Some observers, in fact, credit Gore with coining that very term. Actually, for Senator Gore to seek to build a national data network analogous to the interstate highway system should not surprise us; his father, Al Gore Sr., as a senator in the 1950s was a major proponent of the creation of the Interstate Highway System, modeled after the German autobahns. No doubt Gore Jr. was inspired by the model and metaphor of his father's efforts. Gore Jr.'s remarks in 1989 reflect this throwback to Gore pere's earlier role: <br /><br /><br />THREE YEARS AGO, ON THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM, I SPONSORED THE SUPERCOMPUTER NETWORK STUDY ACT TO EXPLORE A FIBER OPTIC NETWORK TO LINK THE NATION'S SUPERCOMPUTERS INTO ONE SYSTEM. HIGH-CAPACITY FIBER OPTIC NETWORKS WILL BE THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAYS OF TOMORROW. A NATIONAL NETWORK WITH ASSOCIATED SUPERCOMPUTERS AND DATA BASES WILL LINK ACADEMIC RESEARCHERS AND INDUSTRY IN A NATIONAL COLABORATORY. THIS INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE WILL CLUSTER RESEARCH CENTERS AND BUSINESSES AROUND NETWORK INTERCHANGES, USING THE NATION'S VAST DATA BANKS AS THE BUILDING BLOCKS FOR INCREASING INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTIVITY, CREATING NEW PRODUCTS, AND IMPROVING ACCESS TO EDUCATION. LIBRARIES, RURAL SCHOOLS, MINORITY INSTITUTIONS, AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS WILL HAVE ACCESS TO THE SAME NATIONAL RESOURCES -- DATA BASES, SUPERCOMPUTERS, ACCELERATORS -- AS MORE AFFLUENT AND BETTER KNOWN INSTITUTIONS. <br />CAN WE RELY ON THE MARKET SYSTEM TO PROVIDE THIS KIND OF INFRASTRUCTURE? WE CERTAINLY COULDN'T WHERE THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM WAS CONCERNED, ALTHOUGH PRIVATE INDUSTRY ULTIMATELY BENEFITED A GREAT DEAL FROM THE GOVERNMENT'S LEADERSHIP AND INVESTMENT. I BELIEVE THAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT MUST AGAIN BE A CATALYST, TO GET COMPANIES INTERESTED IN THOSE INFORMATION NETWORKS AND SHOW THEM THAT THERE IS A MARKET OUT THERE. CLEARLY, THE TECHNOLOGICAL SPINOFFS AND PRODUCTIVITY GAINS WOULD BE ENORMOUS, FROM A NETWORK THAT WOULD COST THE GOVERNMENT LESS THAN ONE STEALTH BOMBER.<br /><br />...Gore's efforts in the mid to late 1980s to promote national networking initiatives eventually paid off, when the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 was passed by both houses of Congress. The Houston Chronicle ran an article under the headline "Data superhighway' for nation's computers approved by Congress" on November 30, 1991, crediting Gore's role: <br /><br /><br /> A plan to create a high-tech "data superhighway" likened in importance to the creation of the nation's highway system has been approved by Congress and sent to President Bush for his signature. <br /><br /> The plan would create a high-speed national computer networking infrastructure that would link computers in the nation's research, education and military establishments. <br /><br /> Proponents say that this network eventually will evolve into a universally available National Public Telecomputing Network that may be the successor to the telephone system, marrying the entertainment, communications and computer industries. <br /><br /> The High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, which contains the plan, was approved by a House-Senate conference committee over the weekend after being stalled for several weeks because of disagreement over a "buy American first" provision. <br /><br /> The bill, sponsored by Sen. Albert Gore, D-Tenn., does not provide funding for the effort. Budget allocations and appropriations must be made individually during each year of the program.<br /><br />...Any fair review of the legislative record makes it clear that Senator Gore was an early and forceful advocate for high-speed national networks, and that he understood how this vision could lead to widespread benefits for the citizenry and for commerce in the United States. <br /><br />No doubt that record is what he sought to convey in his answer to Blitzer. If Al Gore had chosen a slightly different formulation for his extemporaneous statement, none of this discussion would have ensued. For instance, this statement might have avoided the repetition and ridicule: <br /><br />"While I was serving in the Senate, I took the initiative in supporting the basic research necessary to create the Internet as we know it today."<br /><br />But Gore - and the nation - are stuck with the words he chose and the reaction that followed. Gore's slight misstatement, and its subsequent magnification, distortion, and frequent repetition, stymie Gore in any attempt he might want to make to use his record on Internet issues during the current campaign. He simply can't raise the subject in a serious way. He is reduced to joining in the joking himself. This citizenry is thus deprived of any serious discourse in the 2000 Presidential campaign relating to Internet issues.<br /><br />__________________________________________________<br /><br />One more reference, this one from an academic paper about the issue that examines the dynamics of how the Gore/ internet misinterpretation was created as well as more facts regarding the issue.<br /><br />I'll save you more excerpts, this is already extremely long.<br /> http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/research_programs/ppt/papers/Gore412.pdf <br />__________________________________________________
I swore that super Al single handedly invented the internet, geez! i told it to all of my friends and all, how could i have been so wrong? ...Bwaaaaaaaa!! 
