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I'll get hammered for this, but as a young man, I remember Al Gore talking about the Internet. Yes, there were people before him, but he had the stage, and the

I'll get hammered for this, but as a young man, I remember Al Gore talking about the Internet. Yes, there were people before him, but he had the stage, and the audience. He started people--people with money, and connections to look into this crazy university tool. He made the mistake of say he invented the Internet. It's was a bad, egotistical statement, but he got us talking about it. Actually, I don't even think we would be talking about global warming if it wasen't for Al Gore. I didn't like the man when I was younger for horrid reasons; like I thought he was a spoiled, rich politician who really didn't care, and was using these topics to gain political points. I was completely wrong! I wish he would run for office again. I know I would give him a vote.

mikekchar 11y ago
Perspective is a funny thing. I'm trying to work out the timing, but my buddy and I were running a UUCP network in Manitoba, Canada round about 1988. UUNet had just connected to the internet backbone and we chatted with them briefly about connecting up with them. They said as long as we paid for a T1 from Toronto, they would let us work with them. I'm pretty sure this was before AlterNet, so it would have had to have been prior to 1990. IIRC, the cost to us would have been about $30K per month and we considered the option of starting up a commercial ISP. In the end we decided not to, but at the time I was absolutely convinced we could have made it a viable business. When Al Gore hit my radar, I thought he was completely irrelevant. In retrospect, I'm sure that's not true because some of the legislation that he pushed through paved the way for commercial traffic. But believe me, it was coming whether he did anything or not. He may have accelerated the process slightly, but probably not too much. His major contribution may actually have been to maintain US dominance of the internet for a couple more decades. Canada was already gearing up for it and I remember friends setting up fledgling ISPs in about 1993 (right when CANARIE had finished being set up). Personally, I don't have any real thoughts about Al Gore one way or another. I can see he was very influential, but from my perspective he was mostly just riding the wave as opposed to creating it.

mikekchar 11y ago

Perspective is a funny thing. I'm trying to work out the timing, but my buddy and I were running a UUCP network in Manitoba, Canada round about 1988. UUNet had just connected to the internet backbone and we chatted with them briefly about connecting up with them. They said as long as we paid for a T1 from Toronto, they would let us work with them. I'm pretty sure this was before AlterNet, so it would have had to have been prior to 1990. IIRC, the cost to us would have been about $30K per month and we considered the option of starting up a commercial ISP. In the end we decided not to, but at the time I was absolutely convinced we could have made it a viable business. When Al Gore hit my radar, I thought he was completely irrelevant. In retrospect, I'm sure that's not true because some of the legislation that he pushed through paved the way for commercial traffic. But believe me, it was coming whether he did anything or not. He may have accelerated the process slightly, but probably not too much. His major contribution may actually have been to maintain US dominance of the internet for a couple more decades. Canada was already gearing up for it and I remember friends setting up fledgling ISPs in about 1993 (right when CANARIE had finished being set up). Personally, I don't have any real thoughts about Al Gore one way or another. I can see he was very influential, but from my perspective he was mostly just riding the wave as opposed to creating it.