this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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261
Tim Berners-Lee: Marking the Web’s 35th Birthday: An Open Letter (medium.com)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Al Gore claimed to invent the internet.

Tim Berners Lee invented the world wide web. He did this through the creation of technologies foundational to web browsers, including the URL, HTTP, and HTML. That he invented them isn’t controversial.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Al Gore claimed to invent the internet.

Al Gore claimed to be involved in approving the funding which resulted in the creation of the Internet.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

When asked to describe what distinguished him from his challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gore replied (in part): "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."

-Snopes

His choice of words was poor and makes it sound like alone “took the initiative in creating the internet.” Whatever he really meant, his wording makes it sound like he’s claiming a bit more credit for his role than it merits.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It's also worth reading an open letter from Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf on the issue. While no one person invented the Internet, those two would be towards the top of the list of people who were involved in inventing it.

https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~fessler/misc/funny/gore,net.txt

tl;dr: Al Gore was among the first policy makers to really understand its importance, and pushed for legislation that got it into people's homes. Technical people tend to scoff at politicians a lot, but good policy making is important. The Internet would not have taken off the same way without Al Gore.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

"Took initiative in creating the internet" sounds a lot to me like making sure it happened (which is exactly the role a government official should have; funding and policy). It's very different than claiming he invented it.