Did Al Gore really claim that he invented the Internet a while ago?

Question

That's what someone told me.

Answer 1

You can check these urban legends out on www.snopes.com. Don't be misled by friends or posters here.

Claim: Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the Internet.

Status: False.

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): “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.”

Clearly, although Gore's phrasing was clumsy, 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.

It is true 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).

Answer 2

Yes, his exact claim was that he as a congressmen sponsored legislation that started building the Internet. The problem though was that the Internet had been around for a long time before Gore was ever elected. He has also claimed he was a poor tobacco farmer, and that Global Warming is man made. Both of which are wrong. Al Gore grew up in private schools payed for by his father who was a congressman. Al Gores father incidental was strictly opposed to civil rights legislation for blacks, like most of the Democrats at the time.

Answer 3

First...it is so old...yet enable me clean it up for you besides... Al Gore never suggested he "invented the internet"....he suggested.."we've been virtually inventing the internet as we went alongside". He did no longer in my opinion invent the internet. Al Gore replace into heavily in contact in the earliest stages of establishing and investment the introduction of the internet. - certainty.

Answer 4

No, but just like Howard Dean's "BLEEARGH" scream, Karl Rove took it, ran with it, totally destroyed the context and ruined a good man's reputation.

Gore simply said he had helped along the then burgeoning world of the Internet through legislation.
He NEVER EVER claimed he "invented the Internet" and there isn't a person out there who can provide factual proof.

Answer 5

No, but that and Clinton's infidelity are the only two bullets repubics have to defend all of the disaster their Bush & Dick have caused.

Answer 6

For you and any others who might be interested in the TRUTH, please go to the following website.....:

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

This will clearly detail this long-lasting urban myth.....

Answer 7

I never heard such a thing, but that wouldn't surprise me. Ali Gore is capable of saying crazy things.

Answer 8

He did it after inventing TV

Answer 9

yes

Answer 10

Yes. He's claimed a lot of ridicules things. He claims to have won the presidency in 2000. NOT!