this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
260 points (99.2% liked)

Technology

59534 readers
3197 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
L3s@fry.gs
L4s@fry.gs
L4s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
260
Tim Berners-Lee: Marking the Web’s 35th Birthday: An Open Letter (medium.com)
submitted 8 months ago by SorteKanin@feddit.dk to c/technology@lemmy.world
49 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] phoneymouse@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 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.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 13 points 8 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.

[–] phoneymouse@lemmy.world 3 points 8 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.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 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.

[–] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 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.