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History of the First Internet
U96 writes "Ever since the Gore claim to have "invented" the internet, its history has been the subject of misinformation and ridicule. The Institue of Internet History contains an accurate, in-depth examination of the early industrial origins of the internet. An interesting read..."
Ever since the Gore claim to have "invented" the internet, its history has been the subject of misinformation and ridicule.
Considering Gore never claimed to have invented the internet, you've actually managed to include misinformation in a sentence criticizing misinformation. Well done.
What Gore said is that in an 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." As Al Franken wrote:
> The phrase "invented the Internet" first appeared in a
> Republican Party press release and would be repeated by the
> "liberal" press thousands of times during the campaign.
Snopes the urban legend debunking website reported on this as well:
> Claim: Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the
> Internet.
> Status: False.
> Origins: No, Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet,
> nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted
> that way. The derisive "Al Gore said he 'invented' the Internet"
> put-downs are misleading distortions of something he said
> (taken out of context) during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on
> CNN's "Late Edition" program on 9 March 1999.
As the Boston Globe [Oct 17,2000] reported:
So, if the Republicans were working to trash Gore's reputation, I guess they could say "Mission Accomplished".
Taco, thanks for proving once again the old proverb, "a lie can make it halfway 'round the world before the truth gets its boots on."
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
What Gore said was poorly worded, but true.
If Gore hadn't pushed for funding of the National Science Foundation to create nsfnet, the Internet wouldn't exist in the manner it is today.
Just change "took the initiative in creating the internet" with "ran the initiative to fund the creation of the internet" and you have a sentence that means the exact same thing yet can't be misinterpreted.
And that's close enough for a good smear campaign, isn't it?
If you ever wonder why politicians so often sound like robots when they are speaking in public, this is why: because they have to constantly watch every single word they utter, to make sure that nothing they say (and no subset of anything they say) can be taken out of context and twisted against them. So instead of just speaking their position, they have to run this expensive (O(N^2)) political-defense algorithm on everything they say -- and since very few people can run that algorithm in real time, most politicians end up just repeating a few pre-vetted canned phrases over and over again.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
So taking "the initiative in creating" something isn't inventing it? Am I unreasonable in thinking otherwise?
If he were an inventor, that could make sense. But, he was a lawmaker, and he was referencing his work in the congress.
If Reagan had said, "I took the initiative in creating the Star Wars Missile Defense System", would you first assume that he was working in a lab, designing high-energy lasers? Or would you go with the more rational assumption that he provided some leadership in getting it done?
The problem is that we Americans are pretty much dumb, reactionary, rather uneducated. We approach a situation already with the answer we want and grasp onto "evidence" that supports it.
Here, non-Gore supporters don't like Gore and hear someone say he claimed to invent the internet. Hearing the whole statement in context, it's difficult to rationally come to the assumption that Al was slaving away in his basement inventing routers, network cards, fiber optics, and cat-5.
We'd rather be intellectually dishonest than concede a nifty soundbite that makes us sound so smart, clever, and in tune.
How else exactly would you interpret that?
Ummm... that he was a lawmaker, talking about his record, and among the things he worked on was getting support for creating the internet.
You have to either be intellectually dishonest, or dumb as a bag of hammers to assume he was inventing the internet.
Let's look at a hypothetical example. It's an example that may not have a basis in fact, but exhibits certain constraints that permit analysis, and possibly the finding of a solution.
Let's suppose I am the mayor of your town, and the streets in the town are very dirty. There's no city program for cleaning the streets. So, as mayor, I lobby the city council, dedicate resources, hire staff, and invest in street cleaning equipment.... all of this is dedicated to getting the streets clean. So, a year later, the streets are really clean, and I'm running for reelection. And I state in an interview, "During my service as your mayor, I took the initiative in cleaning the city streets."
Now... would you be a dufus and assume that statement meant I single-handedly went out and cleaned the streets? Or would you use some of your brainpower and figure out that I meant that I took the initiative in getting the streets cleaned.
Hell, I didn't like Gore, and I didn't vote for him. But it makes us all dumber when we cling to insipid arguments like, "he claimed he invented the internet".
It's the same idiocy with people saying Bush is stupid. Clearly, he's smart enough to get through grad school (even with a C average), be the governor of a large state, and become the president of the US. Not being able to speak elloquently does not make him stupid. On the other hand, I also believe he's been one of the most harmful presidents in recent history.
It's sad that we Americans have lowered the political discourse to "he claims he invented the internet", and "he's dumb". Really, it just makes us all dumber.
It's bad enough to take what Gore actually said, that he took a lead role in the creation of the Internet -- which he did, by supporting the project in his political role -- and buy into the urban legend that he said he invented it. It's even worse to put quotes around it and thus falsely claim that that word came from Gore.
So in short, as Cmdr. Taco keeps reminding us, "Hey! We're News For Nerds! News doesn't have to stick to that annoying 'truth' stuff!" (No, he didn't actually say that, but hey, let's put it in quotes as if he did...)
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.
" If Al Gore didn't have a well-deserved reputation for firing off whoppers, this one wouldn't have stuck."
He had no such reputation. As the parent post's link points out, it was fabricated by the RNC and various eager writers in 2000.
Bush, however, has a long history of non-history. Which rarely has been questioned by those self-same eager boys. His arrest record. Drug use. Alchoholism until he was 40. Violent behavior. Horrfying academic record coupled with a well-documented sense of disdain towards university education. Dad's friends' influence in getting him into the champagne unit of the Texas Air National Guard. Failure to show up for duty. Refusing direct orders to report for a physical. Failure to be sent to Vietnam via the Army for refusing said order, which happened to other officers who did not obey orders. Failures of his "businesses". His involvement in the real estate deal in which land granted to build a baseball stadium was instead sold off to build profitable developments, giving him his first real money with which to run for governor. The utter fiscal disaster left in Texas after his tax cuts there. The collapse of the Texas school system, with his blessing. The funeral industry scandal that he involved himself in. The amazing elevation of a no-account dunderhead to governor and then President in less than five years. His daughters: the restauranteur who carded the twins was weeks later ruined by inspectors - business lost as retribution. The retribution against the man who outed the Bush's national guard record - his veterans benefits canceled as he dies from a viral infection caught in service. The vile accusations against McCain in 2000. the unbelieveable memetic attack against Gore in 2000. The Bush brothers control of the electoral process in Florida in 2000. The recount blockage. The fake "riot" in Dade county against election officials, rioters composed of RNC staffers. The shutdown of environmental laws. Of the Microsoft case. The unbelieveable failure to read critical material before 9-11 warning of the attack. the four-year campaign to block the investigation of such. The utilization of a sad, small attack by a couple of dozen fanatics to convince Americans they were at war with Iraq, Iran, Europe, and anyone who looked at us funny. The complete failure to capture the man who actually attacked us. The illegal imprisonment of anyone who looked useful in making the dope look competent in waging war. The flauting of the law in imprisonment and torture of anyone they felt like. Ignoring the Supreme Court in refusing a fair hearing to those tortured. The suppression of the torture news. The suppression of any news that they made inaccurate statement about "evidence" of Saddam Hussein's involvement in the 9-11 idiots' attack. The complete restructuring of the U.S. into a police state, ongoing. Refusing to answer questions put to him by the press. Declarations that the press was an "interest group", and as such, could be ignored or lied to. Creation of special civilian "intellence" filters that culled "facts" from the CIA biomass that the President could use to invade a non-combatant nation.The setup later to blame the CIA for the information they themselves filtered and massaged, and therefore take direct control of ALL intel agencies. War crimes against a non-hostile nation. Imprisonment of citizens of a non-hostile nation. Torture of citizens of a non-hostile nation. Coverup of same. Successful attempts, through RNC-sympathetic corporate board members at GE, Disney, Viacom and AOL-Time-Warner, to "Red State" or "Nascarize" the news operations of NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN, now ongoing as the Brokow, Jennings, and Rathers are being expunged simultaneously along with all non-right-wing thinkers. The current run-up to invade Iran. The destruction of Social Security by tax cuts. The future elimination of public education by the deaths of a thousand cuts to advance a religious and private school system. Censorship. State religion. The complete restructuring of the judiciary to a Chicago-
The fact the "Gore claimed to have invented the Internet" meme has now reach the /. headliners says to me /. is dead.
For a long time now I've noticed most "discussion" is so far off topic and so predictably childish and pointless, that there is no reason to even come here anymore.
Blah.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Judicial activism is such a strawman. Everyone who uses that phrase ignores the actual legal reasoning behind every claim and just repeat the dirty phrase like some parrot whose recording got stuck in the groove.
They ignore conservative "judicial activism", such as making corporations legal individuals back in the 1880s or so, or the more recent remark by Justice Scalia, in the Texas case which gave homosexuals the right to privacy as regards sex in their own bedrooms; where even he admitted the legal reasoning was valid but he voted against it on the grounds it would upset the current conservative moral agenda.
Is that not the definition of judidical activism?
Infuriate left and right