The truth is he did help get it going. And his exact quote: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
and
"The Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the Vice President in his current role and in his earlier role as Senator." - Vint Cerf
Language is so much fun in political season.
What line of crap.
Al Gore Meets the Information Highway
We have seen that Internet history cannot be easily summarized; there is no one single moment of discovery or invention. Press reports that claim the "Internet was invented in 1969" simply are not accurate; the term "internet" had not yet been coined. The most accurate summary would avoid use of the word "invent" altogether, as the Internet is not a single technology or device. One might date the birth of the Internet to the 1970s, when Kahn and Cerf began research on the Internet Protocol, or the 1980s, when it came into widespread use. But as the timeline shows, the basic underlying ideas date back as far as the early 1960s.
Clearly, then, if we take Gore literally at his word, he could not have "taken the initiative in creating the Internet." As the ARPANET moved from research to deployment, Gore was finishing college and serving in the Army in Vietnam. From 1976 to 1985, Gore served in the House of Representatives. From 1985 to 1992, he served in the Senate. The record shows that his interest in national computer networking issues became acute during his years in the Senate - when the Internet clearly was fully in operation.
So let us grant to Gore's critics that he was in no position to "take the initiative in creating the Internet." But is it possible that Gore's declaration, chosen in real time during a live-on-tape interview, could be simply a poor choice of words - sloppy speaking on his part - and that a slightly different formulation might be quite reasonably interpreted as totally accurate?
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http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/