this is my first post, sorry for it not being more interesting, but i just thought that with the amount of people visiting this board, hopefully someone can help me…
is there footage of him actually saying he invented the net? or a transcript from a reliable source that you could provide me with?
thanks alot in advance 
Welcome to the SDMB!
Footage of him saying something like that had been used in various Republican campaign commercials from time to time in my area, but it’s used out of context. Snopes.com details it here:
Not really. He claimed that he took a lot of initiative in the political work behind the US government’s research that led to what we now know as the Internet, which is largely true.
He did however, bring the phrase “Information Superhighway” into the lexicon, while not inventing that, either.
Not really. He took credit for congressional initiatives that created the internet, which somehow got mangled into a claim that he was the internet’s “inventor.” It was a dubious claim anyway, but it’s not the same as claiming he invented it in the same sense Whitney invented the cotton gin.
It’s really a question of how you interpret statements that actually were made by Gore. Snopes ran an article about it:
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.htm
In short, he did say he “took the initiative in creating the Internet” when he was a Congressman. Whether this means he claims to have invented the internet, or if he merely says he gave the technological efforts of internet pioneers political support or whatever, is up to you.
Personally, I think a person as intelligent as Gore would hardly be as stupid as to think people would actually buy his claim to have invented the web, but it really is a question of interpretation.
Oops. Mass simulpost.
Absolutely not. Nor did he claim to have originally discovered Love Canal and, when he said that he and Tipper were the models for the lead characters in “Love Story” he was accurately referring to a previous interview given by the novel’s author. Gore was the victim of a campaign of deliberate character assassination.
Here is the link for the original interview the slander was based on:
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore/index.html
Gore did lead the Senate in writing and passing legislation that provided funding and the legal structure necessary to create the internet. He never said he was its Thomas Edison. That was a fabrication.
If you want a really good site that gives the skinny on our woefully dysfunctional and negligent news media from a source that’s blatantly partisan but laudibly responsible check out http://www.dailyhowler.com
I chalk Gore’s statement up to simply mispeaking, I’m sure he didn’t believe he created the internet or that he could convince people that he did. I think Snopes is wrong, however, by saying:
Uh, yeah you could interpret that to mean he said he created the internet because that’s exactly what he said. Of couse he didn’t mean it the way it came out and much to do was made about nothing.
thanks for clearing that up! i appreciate the quick responses
Uh wait a minute.
It’s true that he didn’t claim to “invent it” from a scientific perspective. But he did claim to create it as best a Congressman can create something, which is an enormous claim. And he did not do what he claimed.
In other words, he did claim to create it, and this was a boastful lie.
The quote (mentioned above) was simply “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”
And in fact, the majority of the what most knowledgable people would define as the internet was funded and built before Gore’s first term in Congress in 1977. Also, there isn’t even one particularly important piece of legislation that Gore sponsored or championed that helped the Internet in any large way, let alone that could be claimed to be the “initiative in creating the Internet.”
So, in short, Gore did lie and take credit for creating the Internet, when in fact he did not.
And shame on Snopes for both mentioning this only as the last paragraph in their explanation, as well as misleading the initial question, creating a strawman “No” as an answer when the answer clearly was “yes”
As much as I find him to be a weiner, in his defense he’s noted above as saying that he took initiative. It’s also noted that he led the Senate in drawing up props to help with the creation of the internet. He takes credit in part for playing a somewhat important, if not dispensable, role in the creation of the internet.
Bill:
You said
Snopes said “many of the components of today’s Internet came into being well before Gore’s first term in Congress began in 1977.”
Then you said
Snopes said “it’s hard to find any specific action of Gore’s (such as his sponsoring a Congressional bill or championing a particular piece of legislation) that one could claim helped bring the Internet into being, much less validate Gore’s statement of having taken the “initiative in creating the Internet.””
The page is an attempt to debunk the myth that Gore said he invented the internet, which is false. He didn’t say that, period. And even if you’re not aware of it, it is widely circulated as fact that Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet. It’s true that he said that at a Congressman, he did work that led to its creation, and there’s no particular basis for that claim. But Snopes didn’t create the strawman, they drew a distinction between the claim and what Gore really said. Then they dealt with what he really said - and I can’t argue with the way it was organized. It’s not as if they buried the information!
I gotta say, that was damn impressive.
He may not have lied about the internet. But he did lie when he said he wouldn’t tell his friends about us. “It will just be our little secret. I promise.” Lying bastard. Now Leiberman thinks he can just come over any time of the day or night all drunk on sweet wine shouting “It’s Friday night but I’m gonna’ work your tochus!”
Never trust a politician. At least Kennedy always offers to drive me home afterwards. But his car seats are always wet. WTF with that?
Marley23, we both agree on the facts.
My point is that the Snopes article (and many of the initial responses to this thread) are very Clinton-ian, playing with words, and evading the real issue.
Technically, it’s accurate that what is claimed – that he invented the internet – is untrue. But it’s mighty damn close to the truth, which was that he said he “took the initiative in creating the internet.”
Most importantly, this response completely evades the core of the accusation against him: that he claimed credit for something very large, which in fact he did not deserve credit for.
So, shame on Snopes for creating a strawman “yes” response. But you are absolutely correct that Snopes went on to give all of the facts in the matter. In contrast to braintree, who said things like
and
This is as untrue as Gore’s claim. I.e. completely
Al Gore didn’t claim to have “invented” the internet, but he did claim to have created it, which is close enough that reasonable people might misremember or misinterpret the comment.
Snopes tends to be pro-Clinton. The straw-man argument belies this. Don’t forget that she’s only human. Everyone’s judgement is colored by their opinions and beliefs.
To her credit, Snopes does point out that Gore’s claim, even when quoted correctly, still falls apart. There’s no evidence that Big Al created, sponsored, or in any other way advanced the development of the 'Net.
Joseph Traub of Colum,bia University (as quoted here:
Bottom line: In 1969 four California universities with Defense Department contracts interlink their mainframe computers under the sponsorship of DOD’s Advanced Resezarch Project Agency (ARPA) to create ARPANET. In 1979 USENET is created at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1982 TCP/IP is created, and the term “Internet” is coined. See Internet Timeline.
Truthorfiction.com says:
The same page notes a few additional bills relating to advancing and spreading information technology which Gore sponsored.
In summary, a few Defense Department installations and college and university computer laboratories hooked together are not today’s Internet, though they were ancestral to it. Al Gore appears to have been remarkably insightful and visionary for a Congressman in seeing the potential in networking together computers across the country. (And anyone who’s ever had to try to explain a new concept to a political leader will recognize how remarkable that is.)
Gore introduced at least one, and he claims other, bills that were important in advancing the Internet from the province of DOD and universities into what we know today. He made a self-serving claim during the campaign that was based loosely on fact – that he was responsible for political and financial support that helped create the Internet we know today. He did not claim to have “invented the Internet” – those words were first attributed to him by Wired.com twelve days after the Wolf Blitzer interview.
"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. "
Al Gore is, in fact, the one who wrote the legislation that provided funding and legal structure to create the internet. Therefore, there is nothing amiss about him claiming “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” Clearly, from the context, he was speaking of his role as a Senator.
Really, there’s something truly repugnant, twisted, scarey and corrupt about the Republican shameless compulsion to distort reality in order to destroy other people’s reputations and their ability to keep right on damning their victims’ characters after their own fraudulence has been exposed. This behavior is truly disgusting. I really wish you folks would cut it out. Small wonder, Joe McCarthy was a Republican. It seems he was the perfect type.