Al Gore/Inventing the Internet?

Question

When I try to argue politics with my dad he constantly brings this up and I was pretty young when it happened, so I have only a minor recolection of the event. My boyfriend says that it was taken WAY out of context. So what really happened? Did he just come out and say "I invented the internet" or what was the context?
Thanks!

Answer 1

In February 1993, President Clinton and Vice President Gore submitted a report, Technology for America's Economic Growth which outlined the ways in which their administration planned further development of what Gore referred to as the Information Superhighway by the year 2000. Gore further developed these ideas in speeches that he made at The Superhighway Summit on 1994-01-11 at Royce Hall, UCLA and for the International Telecommunications Union on 1994-03-21. In addition, on 1994-01-13, Gore "became the first U.S. vice president to hold a live interactive news conference on an international computer network".

Al Gore rocks and the world would be in a very different place had he taken his rightful seat in the oval office.

WHAT PART OF LOCK-BOX DON'T THEY UNDERSTAND???

Answer 2

"Did Al Gore invent the Internet?
According to a CNN transcript of an interview with Wolf Blitzer, Al Gore said,"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Al Gore was not yet in Congress in 1969 when ARPANET started or in 1974 when the term Internet first came into use. Gore was elected to Congress in 1976. In fairness, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf acknowledge in a paper titled Al Gore and the Internet that Gore has probably done more than any other elected official to support the growth and development of the Internet from the 1970's to the present ."

Answer 3

It was invented by the science community loooooong before Al Gore, he only promoted it as a public communications medium, and even then it was the WWW he promoted, not the internet.

SEE: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,18390,00.html
ALSO SEE: http://sethf.com/gore/

""Gore played no positive role in the decisions that led to the creation of the Internet as it now exists -- that is, in the opening of the Internet to commercial traffic," said Steve Allen, vice president for communications at the conservative Progress and Freedom Foundation."

TWO EXCERPTS FROM:
http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/col/rose/2000/10/05/gore_internet/index.html?pn=2

"The Internet didn't spring full-blown out of some scientists' heads, nor did it just grow, like some techno-Topsy powered by the mysterious magic of the marketplace. It emerged from the world of government-subsidized university research, and every step of the way along its passage from academic network to global information infrastructure was shepherded by the state. As the Net's parent, the government didn't do everything right; but it managed to nurture the network through its youth -- then get out of the way once it was mature enough to move out of its parents' digs and shack up with private industry.

Libertarians and conservatives are uncomfortable admitting this. Their vision of Net history is a stirring saga of markets overwhelming states, technological imperatives vanquishing stifling bureaucracies and free information "routing around" government blockages. There's some truth in this vision -- but it's only part of the story.

The other part of the Net's history is a complex, and sometimes dull, chronicle of federal research grants, bureaucratic infighting and legislative initiatives that stitched together a messy but functional patchwork quilt of linked computers -- the famous "network of networks" that arose primarily in the 1980s, when the term "Internet" first came into play, and that remained a dark horse in the race to connect the public until around 1994."

Here is what Gore "did":
""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.""

Answer 4

Al Gore is a boob. He was no more a part of creating the Internet as you. Why would an environmentalist drive a SUV? Him and Kerry(Kerry has a few hummers) are some of the worst examples of a democrat I could imagine. Listen to your dad he has been around

Answer 5

He didn't invent the internet, it was 2 college professors. Sure they are rich now, but it didn't go as planned when they created the internet. They just wanted it to be a educational thing.

Answer 6

It's not true, he made some sort of statement that was a bit misleading and all that.
Snopes made an article on it:
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

Vinton Cerf is seen as one of the founding fathers of the internet, as he was a big part of the development of the TCP/IP protocol.
For more info about Cerf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinton_Cerf

Answer 7

I remember the incident, He was joking

Answer 8

As absurd as it sounds, he really was instrumental in getting it started.