Ignoring your sarcastic temporal hair splitting around the word "invent" which Gore never said, I'll move on to:
"In 1976, Gore started his long and unbroken career as a politician. According to this empasioned defense [politechbot.com] Al Gore made his first concrete contribution to what we know of as the internet with, "High Performance Computing and Communications Act in 1991." Not bad, he beat Bill Gates to caring, but it's hardly the kind of stuff you could call "instrumental". "
Not Instrumental? That act provided much of the foundation for the Internet you use today. Hell, the provision for exposing more undergraduate students to the Internet probably did more to popularize the Internet than you can measure.
The HPCC represented the culmination of years of lobbying, explaining, and educating on Gore's part, but in addition to this, he helped privatize the Internet paving the way for pretty much everything the public would recognize. He was also an outspoken champion of technology in general, which is the point he was making.
I've met him several times, and he is by far the smartest politician I have EVER met. He could clean Newt Gingrich's clock with one frontal lobe tied behind his back.
I guess the most relevant meeting I ever had with him was in Nashville around 1995. I was part of an Internet startup, an ISP, and got to shake hands with him. He was there as a speaker and essentially a technology cheerleader. I thanked him for helping make our little company a reality.
This was years before the "invented the Internet" nonsense. Even then I credited him with being a visionary about it. He didn't see it as an academic problem, or a network between research institutions, or a defense project, or even a place to find 800 kinds of porn. He saw it as a tools for transforming society.
Read his 2000 Red Herring interview and prepare to be stunned.
"...his statement was way too broad and arrogant. "
So here is the greatest political champion technology has ever had on capitol hill, and now that he is gone, we're having a discussion about the lack of a "technology" voice on the hill.
Maybe his statement wasn't as broad or arrogant as you might think... Without Gore, the Internet would have remained an isolated academic afterthought, and all those real productivity gains in the economy that stem from the Internet wouldn't exist.
Did you ever read the interviews with him about technology?
Did you hear about his NASA satellite?
This man is brilliant, broad minded and far thinking.
Arrogance is telling the American people they don't have a right to know who you meet with when deciding policy or claiming you "signed a patient's bill of rights in Texas," when you did no such thing. Actually, that last one is lying, which even you admit Gore didn't do.
Additionally, on the subject of Reed. He was employed by Enron for a time at the request of Karl Rove so that Reed could remain close to the Bush camp during the campaign without being on payroll.
An earlier poster nailed it when they said Bush is religiously pro-business, and not in an enterpenurial, free-market, sense either. He is pro "BIG BUSINESS." He would have sided with Microsoft regaurdless of the political donations they offered.
Tell me when some corporation is supposed to finally get around to doing the public good? After they take care of their shareholders, political allies, general industry concerns, employees well being, suppliers, and customers I suppose.
"Amory Lovins is selling snake oil," says Myron Ebell, director of international environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "There are immense practical barriers."
This coming from conservatives, the people that brought us the Gulf War, funded Osama Bin Laden and backed the Shah of Iran rather than face an unstable oil market.
I'd say an oil economy has some pretty damn "immense practical barriers" as well when viewed on any scale beyond the next quarter or next election.
Check out this related Japanese space-based H20 cracking solution.
Slashdot Mirror
Ignoring your sarcastic temporal hair splitting around the word "invent" which Gore never said, I'll move on to:
"In 1976, Gore started his long and unbroken career as a politician. According to this empasioned defense [politechbot.com] Al Gore made his first concrete contribution to what we know of as the internet with, "High Performance Computing and Communications Act in 1991." Not bad, he beat Bill Gates to caring, but it's hardly the kind of stuff you could call "instrumental". "
Not Instrumental? That act provided much of the foundation for the Internet you use today. Hell, the provision for exposing more undergraduate students to the Internet probably did more to popularize the Internet than you can measure.
The HPCC represented the culmination of years of lobbying, explaining, and educating on Gore's part, but in addition to this, he helped privatize the Internet paving the way for pretty much everything the public would recognize. He was also an outspoken champion of technology in general, which is the point he was making.
I've met him several times, and he is by far the smartest politician I have EVER met. He could clean Newt Gingrich's clock with one frontal lobe tied behind his back.
I guess the most relevant meeting I ever had with him was in Nashville around 1995. I was part of an Internet startup, an ISP, and got to shake hands with him. He was there as a speaker and essentially a technology cheerleader. I thanked him for helping make our little company a reality.
This was years before the "invented the Internet" nonsense. Even then I credited him with being a visionary about it. He didn't see it as an academic problem, or a network between research institutions, or a defense project, or even a place to find 800 kinds of porn. He saw it as a tools for transforming society.
Read his 2000 Red Herring interview and prepare to be stunned.
-Sandy
"...his statement was way too broad and arrogant. "
So here is the greatest political champion technology has ever had on capitol hill, and now that he is gone, we're having a discussion about the lack of a "technology" voice on the hill.
Maybe his statement wasn't as broad or arrogant as you might think... Without Gore, the Internet would have remained an isolated academic afterthought, and all those real productivity gains in the economy that stem from the Internet wouldn't exist.
Did you ever read the interviews with him about technology?
Did you hear about his NASA satellite?
This man is brilliant, broad minded and far thinking.
Arrogance is telling the American people they don't have a right to know who you meet with when deciding policy or claiming you "signed a patient's bill of rights in Texas," when you did no such thing. Actually, that last one is lying, which even you admit Gore didn't do.
-Sandy
Additionally, on the subject of Reed. He was employed by Enron for a time at the request of Karl Rove so that Reed could remain close to the Bush camp during the campaign without being on payroll.
An earlier poster nailed it when they said Bush is religiously pro-business, and not in an enterpenurial, free-market, sense either. He is pro "BIG BUSINESS." He would have sided with Microsoft regaurdless of the political donations they offered.
Tell me when some corporation is supposed to finally get around to doing the public good? After they take care of their shareholders, political allies, general industry concerns, employees well being, suppliers, and customers I suppose.
-SF
"Amory Lovins is selling snake oil," says Myron Ebell, director of international environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "There are immense practical barriers."
o gy /nasda_solar_sats_011029.html
This coming from conservatives, the people that brought us the Gulf War, funded Osama Bin Laden and backed the Shah of Iran rather than face an unstable oil market.
I'd say an oil economy has some pretty damn "immense practical barriers" as well when viewed on any scale beyond the next quarter or next election.
Check out this related Japanese space-based H20 cracking solution.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technol