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Re: AJAX Patent Granted

Roy Schestowitz scribed:

>What do you mean??? Al Gore did not invent the Internet? But he said so. To
>quote:
>
>Gore: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative
>in creating the Internet." (CNN's 'Late Edition')
>
>Source: http://www.sethf.com/gore/

Claim:   Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the Internet. 

Status:   False. 

Origins:   Despite the derisive references that continue even today, Al
Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything
that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The "Al Gore said he
'invented' the Internet" put-downs were misleading, out-of-context
distortions of something he said during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on
CNN's "Late Edition" program on 9 March 1999. 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." 

Clearly, although Gore's phrasing was clumsy (and perhaps self-serving),
he was not claiming that he "invented" the Internet (in the sense of
having designed or implemented it), but that he was responsible, in an
economic and legislative sense, for fostering the development the 
technology that we now know as the Internet. To claim that Gore was
seriously trying to take credit for the "invention" of the Internet is,
frankly, just silly political posturing that arose out of a close
presidential campaign. Gore never used the word "invent," and the words
"create" and "invent" have distinctly different meanings ? the former is
used in the sense of "to bring about" or "to bring into existence" while
the latter is generally used to signify the first instance of someone's
thinking up or implementing an idea. (To those who say the words "create"
and "invent" mean exactly the same thing, we have to ask why, then, the
media overwhelmingly and consistently cited Gore as having claimed he
"invented" the Internet, even though he never used that word, and
transcripts of what he actually said were readily available.)
-- 
Ed Jay (remove 'M' to respond by email)

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