AL GORE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTERNET
freed...@my-deja.com
Friday, May 05, 2000
Gore Invented Internet?
Hey, He's Got a Case
WASHINGTON
Miffed at the latest attack on him from Vice President Gore, George W.
Bush accuses the vice president of stretching the truth.
"He's the man who said he invented the Internet," Bush gibed, echoing a
common joke at Gore's expense.
Now let's kill the joke.
A) Gore did not claim to have invented the Internet. In an interview
with Wolf Blitzer in March 1999, Gore said: "During my service in the
U.S. Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
B) This claim is perfectly true. In March 1986, when computers were
still something found mostly in laboratories, Gore sponsored the
Supercomputer Network Study Act to link the nation's supercomputers
into a single system.
This was his vision: "Libraries, rural schools, minority institutions
and vocational education programs will have access to the same national
resources — databases, supercomputers, accelerators — as more affluent
and better-known institutions."
Three years later, after noticing that France was making strides with
its Minitel home-computer network, Gore introduced the National High
Performance Computer Technology Act. One of its aims was to "establish
a high-capacity national research and education computer network."
His bill directed that the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, which had created the forerunner of the
Internet, "shall ensure that unclassified computer technology research
is readily available to American industry."
In testimony to a House committee, Gore said: "I genuinely believe that
the creation of this nationwide network ... will create an environment
where work stations are common in homes and even small businesses."
At the time, even computer professionals were jeering at the notion of
personal computers. They would be a waste of money, costly machines for
balancing checkbooks or storing recipes. Gore saw them as terminals in
a future national network of knowledge.
One of Gore's Republican colleagues, Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington,
credited him at the time for introducing a bill that would "create
[note that word] a high-capacity national research and education
network to link up supercomputers and databases around the country."
In 1991, Gore reintroduced his bill to provide funding for development
of a national computer network. He said: "Today, most students using
computer networks are studying science and engineering, but there are
more and more applications in other fields, too. Economists, historians
and literature majors are all discovering the power of networking. In
the future, I think we will see computers and networks used to teach
every subject from kindergarten through grade school."
Gore found a supporter: President George Bush, father of George W. He
signed Gore's bill on Dec. 9, 1991, predicting that this new
technology "offers the potential to transform radically the way in
which all Americans will work, learn and communicate in the future. It
holds the promise of changing society as much as the other great
inventions of the 20th century, including the telephone, air travel,
radio and TV."
Does this documented record justify Gore's claim that during his
service in Congress he took the initiative in creating the Internet as
we know it today? Seems to me, he has a pretty good case.
But don't expect Bush, who urges Gore to "stick to the facts," to drop
his sneer. He knows that a lie is a powerful political weapon that can
survive forever. His own father never managed to kill the myth that he
had no idea what a supermarket checkout computer was.
By the way, when he signed Gore's Internet bill, President Bush took
credit for it himself. He said he had proposed it in his 1992 budget.
http://www.sonic.net/mary/gore-map/internet.html
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Jim Raynor
source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/13640.html
Net builders Kahn, Cerf recognise Al Gore
By: Thomas C Greene in Washington
Posted: 29/09/2000 at 17:02 GMT
We received the following essay by Internet engineering wizzards Robert
Kahn and Vinton Cerf last night courtesy of the Politech mailing list.
While it reads somewhat like a PR blurb, it's also a fair backgrounder
on Democratic presidential hopeful Al Gore's legislative contributions
to the Net. It's reproduced below, unedited and uncut.
Al Gore and the Internet
By Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf
Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of
the Internet and to promote and support its development.
No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the
Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among
people in government and the university community. But as the two people
who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the
Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a
Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official,
to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period
of time.
Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his
role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took
the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people
have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet.
Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as
Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on
the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was
talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were
listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective.
As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high
speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the
improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official
to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader
impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship.
Though easily forgotten now, at the time this was an unproven and
controversial concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was
based on even earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But
the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the
Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman
Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of
the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an
example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put
to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to
natural disasters and other crises.
As a Senator in the 1980s Gore urged government agencies to consolidate
what at the time were several dozen different and unconnected networks
into an "Interagency Network." Working in a bi-partisan manner with
officials in Ronald Reagan and George Bush's administrations, Gore
secured the passage of the High Performance Computing and Communications
Act in 1991. This "Gore Act" supported the National Research and
Education Network (NREN) initiative that became one of the major
vehicles for the spread of the Internet beyond the field of computer
science.
As Vice President Gore promoted building the Internet both up and out,
as well as releasing the Internet from the control of the government
agencies that spawned it. He served as the major administration
proponent for continued investment in advanced computing and networking
and private sector initiatives such as Net Day. He was and is a strong
proponent of extending access to the network to schools and libraries.
Today, approximately 95% of our nation's schools are on the Internet.
Gore provided much-needed political support for the speedy privatization
of the Internet when the time arrived for it to become a commercially-
driven operation.
There are many factors that have contributed to the Internet's rapid
growth since the later 1980s, not the least of which has been political
support for its privatization and continued support for research in
advanced networking technology. No one in public life has been more
intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving
Internet than the Vice President. Gore has been a clear champion of this
effort, both in the councils of government and with the public at large.
The Vice President deserves credit for his early recognition of the
value of high speed computing and communication and for his long-term
and consistent articulation of the potential value of the Internet to
American citizens and industry and, indeed, to the rest of the world.