I sorta remember hearing this debunked forever ago, but I’m not certain. Did he say he invented the internet or was that just falsely attributed to him?
He made no such claim. Here’s Snopes take on it.
This was asked and answered before. A search will give you the thread. He said that his policies were instrumental to the invention of the web.
Oops! I see Early Out answered your question, but this also has been discussed on this MB.
Ah, the classic three-way simulpost! Gives one a warm, runny feeling, don’t it? 
Thanks, I thought to try searching here but was too dorky to figure out the correct search terms to find it. Totally forgot Snopes! :smack:
Here’s another take on it:
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.htm
The exact quote was: “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.” Clearly, his claim wasn’t he invented it. All he was claiming was that as a politician, he backed legislation that fostered the Internet. Admittedly, that is a bit of an exaggeration. The early technology that led to the Internet predated anything Gore did. However, Gore was significant in moving things in the direction of what is now the modern Internet.
No cite, unfortunately, since the book is at home. However, a Sunday Dilbert cartoon from either 93 or 96 talks about Dilbert using the internet to send blonde jokes or something, and the gag is “I wonder whether Al Gore has any idea.” The final panel has Gore laughing at a list of blonde jokes and saying, “Hey, Tipper, take a look at this one!” as a shoe flies at his head.
Man, with a sentence like that, no wonder people boiled it down to “Gore said that 'he invented the Internet.” “I took the initiative…I took the initiative…a whole ranges of initiatives.” Gore badly needed a thesaurus for that one.
As long as we’re debunking “Things Al Gore Never Claimed (But Were Spread By the republicans To Make Him Sound Stupid),” here’s a list that covers Al and “Love Story,” Al’s childhood farming days, and Al and Love Canal. And Rolling Stone covers more right-wing spin against al Gore here.
I’m sorry, I don’t care what Snopes said:
There aren’t many ways to interpret that! Which part of the rest of that quote makes it seem otherwise? 
At least he didn’t make it plural :rolleyes:
Back in the 1950s, the Congressman from my hometown district was one of the half dozen Congressmen who pioneered the idea of appropriating massive funds for the National Defense Highway System – what we now know as the Interstate Highways. Without the support of those six men and of course of Ike himself, the blue-sky concept would never have gotten implemented.
If he had said, “I was instrumental in creating the Interstate Highway System” in a re-election campaign, I would not have thought that he was running a bulldozer or asphalt roller.
Al Gore was one of the few people in America, let alone in Congress, with the vision then to see what we take for granted now. And he deserves credit for pushing the idea – especially from somebody who has the opportunity to post his opinions on an Internet message board. Hey, buddy, without this system, you could not bore someone in New Zealand or Mumbai with your opinions on why there hasn’t been a good Democrat since John W. Davis; you’d be reduced to writing letters to the editor.
But of course, any idea that one can do something that contributed greatly to a useful commodity or process, but was not a direct creation of it, and claim credit in consequence for having helped institute that commodity or process, is foreign to partisanship.
You know, I always considered that the New Republican claim that Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War was a valid one – his policies contributed greatly to the sequence of events that did actually end it. But I guess I’ll have to start calling people on making this outrageous claim, since he never actually physically sat down with Gorby and negotiated an End of Cold War Treaty. Fair?
Polycarp, I had a big snarky reply typed up but I erased it. I like you and I don’t feel like a fight this morning. [sigh]
Can we agree he should have worded it better, like “I contributed greatly to the funding and research that took ARPANET to the Internet we know today” or something like that? “I took the initiative in creating the Internet” … it’s just too easy to take that literally!
You’re right, and I formally apologize to you, to the board, and to the moderators for getting partisan-snarky in GQ. I simply read his words as suggesting what I and others said – that he was instrumental in providing legal and funding support for the construction and eventual joining of ARPANET and UUNET to produce the early precursor of today’s Internet, and was claiming credit for having had the vision to see the value in doing so, unlike most Congresscritters.
Yes, he certainly should have worded it differently. So should Reagan’ partisans. But both claims are out there as they are presently worded, and I believe them to be valid, provided that one brings to the table an objective and expansive view that support and collateral effort can be equally as important as the actual engineering that creates something. Fred in R&D may have invented a better mousetrap, but Sally in Accounting and Harry in Sales made sure that the money was there to pay Fred.
Gore definitely could have phrased that better. My guess is he just thought it would be obvious what he meant. Note he started that out with: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” Gore wasn’t a computer scientist. And, he mentions this happened during his service in the US Congress. It seems clear to me he is bragging that he had the foresight to spearhead legislation that caused others to create the Internet, rather then he was actually writing the computer code and such that resulted in the Internet.
With all due respect, most people would not say that “Sally created the better moustrap.” Fred, or more generally the company that he works for, created it. If Sally tried to claim that she created the better moustrap, most people would call her a liar. Ditto for Harry. He had a hand in it, but the honor of Creator is not his to claim.
Similarly, Gore sponsored the internet. You can even say that he developed it. But to claim that he created it is too much of a stretch.
No worries, classy as always.
Now for this craziness that Reagan was not responsible for the end of the Cold War, we’ll take that up in a different thread. 
So when people say “Ronald Reagan won the Cold War” does that mean they think he was personally shooting down Soviet helicopters in Afghanistan?
Sorry. Everyone else is being nice and reasonable and I’m stirring up the pot. All I can say is that my upstairs neighbours just woke me up out of sound sleep.