Al Gore and information technology
"[1] According to Campbell-Kelly and Aspray (Computer: A History of the Information Machine), up until the early 1990s public usage of the Internet was limited and the "problem of giving ordinary Americans network access had excited Senator Al Gore since the late 1970s.
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.
[4] As a senator, Gore began to craft the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (commonly referred to as "The Gore Bill"[5]) after hearing the 1988 report Toward a National Research Network[6] submitted to Congress by a group chaired by University of California, Los Angeles 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).
President George H. W. Bush predicted that the bill would help "unlock the secrets of DNA," open up foreign markets to free trade, and a promise of cooperation between government, academia, and industry.
This was discussed in detail a few days after winning the election in November 1992 in The New York Times article "Clinton to Promote High Technology, With Gore in Charge.
"[16] They planned to finance research "that will flood the economy with innovative goods and services, lifting the general level of prosperity and strengthening American industry.
"[16] Specifically, they were aiming to fund the development of "robotics, smart roads, biotechnology, machine tools, magnetic-levitation trains, fiber-optic communications, and national computer networks.
[18] Gary Stix commented on these initiatives a few months prior in his May 1993 article for Scientific American, "Gigabit Gestalt: Clinton and Gore embrace an activist technology policy."
Stix described them as a "distinct statement about where the new administration stands on the matter of technology ... Gone is the ambivalence or outright hostility toward government involvement in little beyond basic science.
On taking office in 1993, the new administration set in place a range of government initiatives for a National Information Infrastructure aimed at ensuring that all American citizens ultimately gain access to the new networks.
Howard Rheingold argued in the 1994 afterword to his noted text, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, that these initiatives played a critical role in the development of digital technology, stating that, "Two powerful forces drove the rapid emergence of the superhighway notion in 1994 ....
In the foreword, he stated the following: Since I first became interested in high-speed networking almost seventeen years ago, there have been many major advances both in the technology and in public awareness.
In contrast, when as a House member in the early 1980s, I called for creation of a national network of "information superhighways," the only people interested were the manufacturers of optical fiber.
"[30] The Clipper Chip, which "Clinton inherited from a multi-year National Security Agency effort,"[31] was a method of hardware encryption with a government backdoor.
"[42] In a prepared statement, Gore added that NetDay was part of one of the major goals of the Clinton administration, which was "to give every child in America access to high quality educational technology by the dawn of the new century."
"[44] He also reinforced the impact of the Internet on the environment, education, and increased communication between people through his involvement with "the largest one-day online event" for that time, 24 Hours in Cyberspace.
[45] Gore contributed the introductory essay to the Earthwatch section of the website,[46] arguing that: The Internet and other new information technologies cannot turn back the ecological clock, of course.
But more than delivering information to scientists, equipping citizens with new tools to improve their world, and making offices cheaper and more efficient, Cyberspace is achieving something even more enduring and profound: It's changing the very way we think.
"[48] He also began promoting a NASA satellite that would provide a constant view of Earth, marking the first time such an image would have been made since The Blue Marble photo from the 1972 Apollo 17 mission.
It was often misquoted by comedians and figures in American popular media who framed this statement as a claim that Gore believed he had personally invented the Internet.
"[55] Former UCLA professor of information studies, Philip E. Agre, as well as journalist Eric Boehlert argued that three articles in Wired News led to the creation of the widely spread urban legend that Gore claimed to have "invented the Internet", which followed this interview.
[56][57][58] Jim Wilkinson, who at the time was working as congressman Dick Armey's spokesman, also helped sell the idea that Gore claimed to have "invented the internet".
"[3][57] Cerf would also later state: "Al Gore had seen what happened with the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, which his father introduced as a military bill.
Gore, who was then asked to add a few more words to his speech, stated: "It is time to reinvent the Internet for all of us to make it more robust and much more accessible and use it to reinvigorate our democracy.
[68] On May 4, 2004, INdTV Holdings, a company co-founded by Gore and Joel Hyatt, purchased cable news channel NewsWorld International from Vivendi Universal.
"[71] Gore's 2007 book, The Assault on Reason, is an analysis of what he calls the "emptying out of the marketplace of ideas" in civic discourse due to the influence of electronic media (especially television), and which endangers American democracy.
