Now: who invented the internet (hint) It wasn't Gore! Re: Who invented DOS?

[Vintage Computer Festival]

On Sat, 5 Mar 2005, Joe R. wrote:

>   NO, You are wrong! I've seen the interview where he specificly said that
> HE invented the internet!  Furhtermore, you're also wrong about the
> funding, he did push funding for the internet in schools but the internet
> was Invented and in common use long before he became involved.

Ok, this is what he said:

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in
creating the Internet."

Now, this could obviously be construed as Gore taking credit for
"inventing" the internet, but then one could also be intellectually
dishonest in claiming so.  Understanding politics and having good reading
comprehension helps to parse the actual meaning of this sentence.  It also
helps to not be a total partisan political hack :)

Here's more context:

    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.

    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?

    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.

    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.


And here's the actual transcript:

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore/

BTW, I'm less trusting of Wolf Blitzer (yellow journalist that he is) than
Al Gore at this point (and that's saying a lot) because Blitzer has more
political clout these days, and the distortion and outright lies that he
spews are more dangerous.  But that's just me taking an opportunity to
make overtly political commentary.

More importantly, read what Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf had to say about it:

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200009/msg00052.html

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org

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