PSA

[lederhosen]

It's a free country, and nobody is required to like Al Gore or agree with him on climate change. I'm ambivalent about the guy myself. But any time somebody repeats the tired old myth that Gore claimed to have invented the Internet, I stop listening, because that tells me right away that either they're deliberately lying or they just can't be bothered getting their facts straight.

On a related note, am I imagining it or was there a time (maybe before the brain surgery) when Patrick Cook was imaginative and funny?

Comments

[torin3.livejournal.com]

I know snopes says this is false, but they quote his actual words (incidentally, when did snopes start blocking the copy/paste function?) 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.

Now, nobody I know when they talk about this thinks that he was actually pulling cable, wiring up resistor, or hacking out TCP:IP code. It was obvious from the quote he was talking about passing legislation. However, the networks that eventually became the internet we know and love/hate today started quite a bit earlier than his legislation in congress, and would have happened without his legistlation. It might have taken a few years longer, but it still would have happened.

Gore poorly stated this, in a way that could be summed up as the 'invented/created' quote. He is a politican, and they overstate their cases all the time. Calling Gore on this is just as legitmate as the calling Bush on his poor use of language.

I need to write up a good version of this so I can just cut and paste this whenever I need to. This and a response to 'Clinton was never offered Osama' meme. The man is on tape saying he was offered Osama and turned it down because he wasn't sure of having the proper legal justification to accept the offer.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

incidentally, when did snopes start blocking the copy/paste function?

First time I've noticed that. Looks like it's still possible to Ctrl-U and then paste from the page source, although snipping out the formatting might be more bother than it's worth.

It was obvious from the quote he was talking about passing legislation.

Taken in context, sure. And if people want to mock Gore's actual words in their context, I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is when people snip the context and substitute 'invented', a word Gore didn't use.

However, the networks that eventually became the internet we know and love/hate today started quite a bit earlier than his legislation in congress, and would have happened without his legistlation.

Sure. But in some cases - and this, IMHO, is one of them - 'creation' is an ongoing process.

For instance, nobody seems to have a problem with describing Frank Miller as the creator of '300' (both film and GN) - even though he based his story on a 1962 film, which was based on Herodotus, who was writing - more than two thousand years before Miller was even born - about an actual historical event. All in all, Gore probably had more impact on the shape of the modern Internet than Miller did on the tale of Battle of Thermopylae, and describing either of them as a 'creator' isn't claiming that they and they alone came up with these things.

And maybe if Gore hadn't been around, somebody else would have done the same things. Somebody would certainly have built canals through Suez and Panama if Roosevelt and de Lesseps had never been born, but as the guys who actually did make it happen they rightly get some credit for that.

Gore poorly stated this, in a way that could be summed up as the 'invented/created' quote. He is a politican, and they overstate their cases all the time.

So, also, do the people who insert 'invented' - a word he did not use. If what he said was dishonest or self-important, by all means mock what he said. But when people misrepresent his words in order to make him out as the sort of guy who misrepresents things, that reeks of hypocrisy.