Slashdot Mirror
Correcting the Record: the Government's Role In the Internet
TwobyTwo writes "Yesterday, Slashdot posted a piece titled Who Really Invented the Internet?. It quoted a Wall Street Journal article with the same title by Gordon Crovitz. Crovitz makes the claim that government research did not play a key role in driving the invention of the Internet, giving credit instead to Xerox PARC. Unfortunately, Crovitz' article is wrong on many specific points, and he's also wrong in his key conclusion about the government's role. In a wonderful piece in the LA Times Michael Hiltzik corrects the record. Hiltzik, who is the author of an excellent book about PARC called Dealers of Lightning, makes clear that government funded research was indeed the foundation for the Internet's success."
The technical community may have invented the Internet, but it was the users who made it valuable by entrusting to it their time, money, and content. The users made a huge investment, and while that investment has paid off handsomely, let's not pretend that technologists invented all that valuable content.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Before Al Gore got involved, there was little to no commercial traffic over the Internet (you couldn't sell anything). This was back when the NSF(?) was involved. Afterwards, you could start selling and interest in the Internet increased rapidly.
Did Al Gore create the Internet? No. Was he one of the people primarily responsible for making it what it is today? Yes.
(As opposed to other government projects like the Amtrak Monopoly that should have been sold to Conrail or some other profitable rail company years ago.)
What's the point in turning a government monopoly into a corporate monopoly?
You're aware that there can't be two railway networks on a given territory, right?
Opening the trains to competition, okay, but the tracks are a natural monopoly, and should remain under control of the People, through an entity that is accountable to it. A corporate monopoly isn't accountable to the People.
There's nothing like $HOME
It looks like both WSJ and Gartner have both long since jumped the shark. I was in university in the 80s. Anyone who was at large university in the 1980s would have been there to "watch the Internet happen", so to speak. BITNET, ARPANET, MILNET - how can these "reporters" (and yes, I used 'scare quotes' intentionally) hope to be taken seriously when there are plenty of people still alive who were there when the whole thing started? At least wait until most of us have died off before trying to rewrite history like that. Amateurs.
The WSJ's editorial pages have long been a... special... zone untrammeled by any shreds of 'journalism' that might cling to other sections of the paper.
Honestly, the only thing that vaguely surprised me about the mindbogglingly stupid article we examined yesterday was that(per his CV) the author should have been smart enough to know better...
Which, funnily enough, is almost exactly what he said. People love to misremember what he said, and then hold them accountable for what they wish he said.
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.
Vint Cerf and Bob Khan (who know something about Internet history) had this to say:
"No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President."
and
"as far back as the 1970s, Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship [...] the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication."
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
He also advocated publicly for it, which went a bit beyond just putting his name on a Senate bill. He really believed in its potential and tried to make others aware of it. He deserves more credit than he gets, in any case.
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