Monday, April 9, 2007

Al Gore & Inventing the Internet


This week the class has finished reading Chapter 10 in the Hanson text. However, Hanson did not address the myth that Al Gore claimed to invented the Internet. We'll definitely address that in class.




It would appear Gore never claimed to have invented it-- but he puffed himself up during the campaign in 1999 as having the vision to serve as a founding father for it. The myth that he claimed to invent the Internet seems to come out of a CNN interview he did in with Wolf Blitzer when he was asked how he was different from another candidate.

While political ads and commentaries perpetuated the claim he made such a statement, Gore went along with many of the jokes about it. He often parodied himself on Futurama (his daughter was a writer on the show). Here's a YouTube clip of an episode where he was introduced as the inventor of the environment and the First Emperor of the Moon.