like the single most important person… u could say the ‘father of the internet’ thanks a lot!
Robert Kahn
Newt Gingrich credits Al Gore, of course: “I think its safe to say, that the internet would not exist today, as we know it, were it not for Al Gore. No one in Congress worked as hard on it, or saw its potential more.” Newt Gingrich 9/1/2000 (CSPAN).
As does Vinton Cerf and others: Vinton Cerf and 420 high-tech leaders back Gore: http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/001016/n164681.html .
Hobbes’ Internet Timeline.
If we give separate credit for the invention of the World Wide Web portion of the Internet, the honors go to Tim Berners-Lee, who first hyperlinked one file to another in 1989, and introduced HTML to the public in 1991.
Berners-Lee himself write, “If you are looking for fathers of the Internet, try Vint Cerf and Bob Khan who defined the ‘Internet Protocol’ (IP) by which packets are sent on from one computer to another until they reach their destination.”
This is an unbelieveable, collossal irony. If Al Gore had said “I took the initiative in helping to create the Internet” or “in the creation of the Internet” he’d be president and the world situation would be very different.
sqweels: Nah. The Republicans just lied about it, and the conservative news media just printed the lies (and more lies). http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/gore032199.htm has the internet story but it’s up to the British press to really tell the truth about how unprofessional the media coverage of Gore was: http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,330871,00.html .
Meanwhile, to the subject at hand: While there were many people who came up with the protocols and techniques that were eventually chosen out of the others for what we now call “the internet”, it wouldn’t have happened if the US government hadn’t funded the project. ARPA was one of the projects that came about after the panic incided by Sputnik, the 9/11 of it’s time. Related to, and funded by the same government as, the most successful undertaking in world history: The US Space Program.
We can and should honor those pioneers who developed the technology used for the internet, AND we should honor those visionaries who made the whole project possible AND we should honor those visionaries who made the project successful.
Without these people (and many more), the Straight Dope Message Boards would not exist.
I heard Tim Berners-Lee speak a few years ago. During the Q&A, an acquaintance of mine asked him who invented the internet. Berners-Lee answered, in essence, that he didn’t mind Al Gore sharing the spotlight for its invention, since he was of key importance to its popularization and funding.
thanks so much guys! i think www will do just fine for my college essay 
my thoughts…best story i have read is that a woman professor had a computer and her professor husband had a computer and she wondered why the two machines couldn’t talk to one another. sorry do not have her name.
before there was the internet they were newsgroups (which of course still exist). they were used primarily by universities and the guvmint’ to exchange information.
al gore came up with legislation, to provide the funds, to turn newsgroups into the internet, to be used by the general public.
Find the book “where wizards stay up late” (er… something like that… I might be mis-remembering the title). It’s a very good read on how the internet came to be.