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This meme needs to die. Quoting from: https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/799/708 https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/799/

This meme needs to die. Quoting from: https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/799/708 https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/799/70... > 1988: NSF sponsors a series of workshops at Harvard on the commercialization and privatization of the Internet. > 1988: Kahn et al. write a paper "Towards a National Research Network." According to the Brief History, "This report was influential on then Senator Al Gore, and ushered in high speed networks that laid the networking foundation for the future information superhighway." Gore was making speeches on the senate floor. In 1986, he said in a speech that is on the congressional record: > 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.

ironmagma 4y ago
It's just a fun thing, I don't know how history would affect it unless there was evidence he never said "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" which he did.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  Snopes has a very complete fact check here (regardless of political concerns you may have about it overall, this article particularly has good factual search): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/internet-of-lies/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/internet-of-lies/ There’s a bunch of important contextual quotes: > If, for example, Dwight Eisenhower had said in the mid-1960s that he, while president, "took the initiative in creating the Interstate Highway System," he would not have been the subject of dozens and dozens of editorials lampooning him for claiming he "invented" the concept of highways or implying that he personally went out and dug ditches across the country to help build the roadway. Everyone would have understood that Eisenhower meant he was a driving force behind the legislation that created the highway system, and this was the very same concept Al Gore was expressing about himself with interview remarks about the Internet. > 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. It’s can be a funny joke, but, given its role in the presidential election and the possibility that is swung it to GWB, it’s important to make sure one is making that joke with the full understanding that it was actually taken wholly out of context which it sounds like you’re disagreeing with. If Vint Cerf (the guy this article is about) is out there saying “yup what Al Gore said is 100% accurate”, wouldn’t that cause you to take a second look (seriously - that snopes article has a lot of detail. Highly recommended reading if you’re unfamiliar with the context). Having an organizing or foundational role in ensuring funding gives you a pretty strong claim. It’s like Sergei Brin saying he invented Google. Probably about 0% of his original lines of code still exist. Would you laugh at Steve Jobs if he claimed he invented the iPhone even though he didn’t do participate in inventing any of the actual innovation that would make it what it was like capacitive touch control and multitouch gestures? Would Lincoln be out of place for saying he won the Civil War even though he personally was a civilian and personally hasn’t fought or killed anyone and wasn’t a general? Would Truman be out of place in claiming he was a key piece in the creation of the atomic bombs considering he took the Einstein-Szilard letter to heart and set the governmental wheels in motion that led to the formation of the Manhattan project?
  - lmm 4y ago
    > > If, for example, Dwight Eisenhower had said in the mid-1960s that he, while president, "took the initiative in creating the Interstate Highway System," he would not have been the subject of dozens and dozens of editorials lampooning him for claiming he "invented" the concept of highways or implying that he personally went out and dug ditches across the country to help build the roadway. But Gore didn't say "the National Research Network", he said "the Internet". So a closer analogy would be if Dwight Eisenhower had said "I took the initiative in creating highways". It's sort of true, but it's also a outsized, boastful claim.
    - vlovich123 4y ago
      Happy to have a discussion, but you have to use facts. His role is not limited to NREN and he was pivotal not just in ARPANET (a far more direct precursor to the internet I think you’d agree), but also in making sure it became the Internet by talking about and pushing for legislation making commerce on it possible. > Wolf Blitzer (who conducted the original 1999 interview) stated in 2008 that: “… because it was distorted to a certain degree and people said they took what he said, which was a carefully phrased comment about taking the initiative in creating the Internet to—I invented the Internet. And that was the sort of shorthand, the way his enemies projected it” > In the 1980s and 1990s, he promoted legislation that funded an expansion of the ARPANET, allowing greater public access, and helping to develop the Internet. > Cerf would also later state “… Al was attuned to the power of networking much more than any of his elective colleagues. His initiatives led directly to the commercialization of the Internet” > In a speech to the American Political Science Association, former Republican Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Newt Gingrich also stated: "In all fairness, it's something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is—and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got [to Congress], we were both part of a "futures group"—the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the '80s began to actually happen." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_technology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_tech...
hinkley 4y ago
Somewhere I have a photocopy of a letter from Al Gore thanking the team at NCSA for their work, particularly on the projects that got funding via the NSF, which Al considered himself to be instrumental in allocating, and which paid Bina's and Andreesen's (and a whole bunch of other people's) salaries. If memory serves they also picked up some of the funding for NCSA Telnet, which for many people, in particular Mac and DOS users, was the Telnet program they used for more than a decade. If you're going to go from Van Jacobsen to Tim Berners Lee in one breath, I think the creators and maintainers of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_Telnet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_Telnet deserve a tip of the hat somewhere in there, as well as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_HTTPd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_HTTPd, which begat Apache.

ironmagma 4y ago

It's just a fun thing, I don't know how history would affect it unless there was evidence he never said "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" which he did.

vlovich123 4y ago
Snopes has a very complete fact check here (regardless of political concerns you may have about it overall, this article particularly has good factual search): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/internet-of-lies/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/internet-of-lies/ There’s a bunch of important contextual quotes: > If, for example, Dwight Eisenhower had said in the mid-1960s that he, while president, "took the initiative in creating the Interstate Highway System," he would not have been the subject of dozens and dozens of editorials lampooning him for claiming he "invented" the concept of highways or implying that he personally went out and dug ditches across the country to help build the roadway. Everyone would have understood that Eisenhower meant he was a driving force behind the legislation that created the highway system, and this was the very same concept Al Gore was expressing about himself with interview remarks about the Internet. > 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. It’s can be a funny joke, but, given its role in the presidential election and the possibility that is swung it to GWB, it’s important to make sure one is making that joke with the full understanding that it was actually taken wholly out of context which it sounds like you’re disagreeing with. If Vint Cerf (the guy this article is about) is out there saying “yup what Al Gore said is 100% accurate”, wouldn’t that cause you to take a second look (seriously - that snopes article has a lot of detail. Highly recommended reading if you’re unfamiliar with the context). Having an organizing or foundational role in ensuring funding gives you a pretty strong claim. It’s like Sergei Brin saying he invented Google. Probably about 0% of his original lines of code still exist. Would you laugh at Steve Jobs if he claimed he invented the iPhone even though he didn’t do participate in inventing any of the actual innovation that would make it what it was like capacitive touch control and multitouch gestures? Would Lincoln be out of place for saying he won the Civil War even though he personally was a civilian and personally hasn’t fought or killed anyone and wasn’t a general? Would Truman be out of place in claiming he was a key piece in the creation of the atomic bombs considering he took the Einstein-Szilard letter to heart and set the governmental wheels in motion that led to the formation of the Manhattan project?
- lmm 4y ago
  > > If, for example, Dwight Eisenhower had said in the mid-1960s that he, while president, "took the initiative in creating the Interstate Highway System," he would not have been the subject of dozens and dozens of editorials lampooning him for claiming he "invented" the concept of highways or implying that he personally went out and dug ditches across the country to help build the roadway. But Gore didn't say "the National Research Network", he said "the Internet". So a closer analogy would be if Dwight Eisenhower had said "I took the initiative in creating highways". It's sort of true, but it's also a outsized, boastful claim.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    Happy to have a discussion, but you have to use facts. His role is not limited to NREN and he was pivotal not just in ARPANET (a far more direct precursor to the internet I think you’d agree), but also in making sure it became the Internet by talking about and pushing for legislation making commerce on it possible. > Wolf Blitzer (who conducted the original 1999 interview) stated in 2008 that: “… because it was distorted to a certain degree and people said they took what he said, which was a carefully phrased comment about taking the initiative in creating the Internet to—I invented the Internet. And that was the sort of shorthand, the way his enemies projected it” > In the 1980s and 1990s, he promoted legislation that funded an expansion of the ARPANET, allowing greater public access, and helping to develop the Internet. > Cerf would also later state “… Al was attuned to the power of networking much more than any of his elective colleagues. His initiatives led directly to the commercialization of the Internet” > In a speech to the American Political Science Association, former Republican Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Newt Gingrich also stated: "In all fairness, it's something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is—and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got [to Congress], we were both part of a "futures group"—the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the '80s began to actually happen." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_technology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_tech...

hinkley 4y ago

Somewhere I have a photocopy of a letter from Al Gore thanking the team at NCSA for their work, particularly on the projects that got funding via the NSF, which Al considered himself to be instrumental in allocating, and which paid Bina's and Andreesen's (and a whole bunch of other people's) salaries. If memory serves they also picked up some of the funding for NCSA Telnet, which for many people, in particular Mac and DOS users, was the Telnet program they used for more than a decade. If you're going to go from Van Jacobsen to Tim Berners Lee in one breath, I think the creators and maintainers of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_Telnet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_Telnet deserve a tip of the hat somewhere in there, as well as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_HTTPd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_HTTPd, which begat Apache.