I'm one of those people who prefers to give Al Gore the benefit of the doubt.
As a member of congress Gore was one of those who voted FOR the continued funding of a variety of initiatives that helped fund the research and development of technologies that make up a fairly significant % of what the layman calls "the internet" today.
Further, I don't think anyone can ignore the fact that Al's popularization and use of the term "Information Superhighway" is a *significant part* of what took the web from the province of those of us working in science and technology into the mainstream.
Consider:
In 1992 (the campaign year the Info Superhighway term was used) to send mail to a friend at *cough* MicroSoft I had to supply!a!fully!qualified!path!to!microsoft!friend (or whatever the syntax was). MS did *not* have a web site. Few people even in the computer industry knew what Mosaic was (I was one of the first in my company of 1200 to download it after someone at OSF showed it to me). Gopher and FTP were the primary means of finding and retrieving resources on the internet. By 1994 we were beginning to count the # of TV commercials that included a pointer to a web site. By 1996 "the web" was a household term. I don't think things would have moved that fast without Al Gore's bringing it to the mainstream, leading to articles in Time, Newsweek, etc.
Now -- the real debate -- was it a "good" thing for the web to hit the mainstream like that? Without that accelleration we may not have had the bubble and things could have grown at a more natural pace. Spam might not be as attractive as a vehicle for advertisement and therefore would be less of a problem (there certainly was VERY LITTLE spam between 1985 (the first year I used the net) and 1997 (the first time I saw significant junk in my public mail accounts).
Was Al stupid in the way he phrased himself? Yes. Was his intent to claim he "invented" the internet? I don't think so. Was his intent to say he "popularized" the internet? Possibly.
Peter+
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I'm one of those people who prefers to give Al Gore the benefit of the doubt. As a member of congress Gore was one of those who voted FOR the continued funding of a variety of initiatives that helped fund the research and development of technologies that make up a fairly significant % of what the layman calls "the internet" today. Further, I don't think anyone can ignore the fact that Al's popularization and use of the term "Information Superhighway" is a *significant part* of what took the web from the province of those of us working in science and technology into the mainstream. Consider: In 1992 (the campaign year the Info Superhighway term was used) to send mail to a friend at *cough* MicroSoft I had to supply!a!fully!qualified!path!to!microsoft!friend (or whatever the syntax was). MS did *not* have a web site. Few people even in the computer industry knew what Mosaic was (I was one of the first in my company of 1200 to download it after someone at OSF showed it to me). Gopher and FTP were the primary means of finding and retrieving resources on the internet. By 1994 we were beginning to count the # of TV commercials that included a pointer to a web site. By 1996 "the web" was a household term. I don't think things would have moved that fast without Al Gore's bringing it to the mainstream, leading to articles in Time, Newsweek, etc. Now -- the real debate -- was it a "good" thing for the web to hit the mainstream like that? Without that accelleration we may not have had the bubble and things could have grown at a more natural pace. Spam might not be as attractive as a vehicle for advertisement and therefore would be less of a problem (there certainly was VERY LITTLE spam between 1985 (the first year I used the net) and 1997 (the first time I saw significant junk in my public mail accounts). Was Al stupid in the way he phrased himself? Yes. Was his intent to claim he "invented" the internet? I don't think so. Was his intent to say he "popularized" the internet? Possibly. Peter+