Me Maded Interwebs

I've been more or less aware of the details of this for years now, but perusing through a list of political catch phrases reminded me of it. Although Al Gore has been out of the limelight for some time, I think that there is a certain something interesting about the way society works that will forever remain to be learned from reflecting on the most famous way in which he has been ridiculed:

<sarcasm> "Al Gore invented the Internet." </sarcasm>

I don't know how many times I've heard this statement single-handedly discredit the man. Now, I don't know enough about climate change to debate global warming, but I do know that Al Gore never claimed to invent the Internet. What he actually did say was this:

"I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

Sure, at first it sounds a little funny, maybe even suspicious. If you twist the words around and interpret them the wrong way, it sounds outright ridiculous. What folks fail to realize, however, is that it's actually true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore:

Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn have also noted that, "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 [...] 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, Gore began to craft the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (commonly referred to as "The Gore Bill") after hearing the 1988 report Toward a National Research Network submitted to Congress by a group chaired by UCLA professor of computer science, Leonard Kleinrock, one of the central creators of the ARPANET (the ARPANET, first deployed by Kleinrock and others in 1969, is the predecessor of the Internet).^[50][51][52] The bill was passed on December 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII) which Gore referred to as the "information superhighway."

So there you have it. With the right amount of public ignorance and the right tone of voice, a statement of absolute fact is skewed into a delusion of grandeur. Suddenly there's no need to debate the existence of Manbearpig; the guy who says that he's real is off his fucking rocker. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. These are not the droids you're looking for.

Whether that nobody takes Al Gore seriously as a result is a good thing or not is up for debate. Regardless, the damage has been done; Critical thinking For The Lose.