Snopes and Reliability

This morning I got a comment on an earlier snide aside that "Al Gore never claimed to have invented the internet." and a reference to an article in SNOPES (which is often a great debunker of myths). In this case the reference is a bit less reliable.

On March 19, 1999 Gore was on CNN - he stated and Snopes actually quotes the transcript (from Gore)-

"But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years.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." I am not sure how else one can interpret the highlighted text. The language is convoluted but "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" is pretty clear to me.

Snopes goes on to argue that the (admittedly) inflated claim made by Gore does not suggest that he "invented" the internet merely that he helped to foster it. Indeed, Gore was on several bills that increased funding for the Internet including a bill in 1986 which funded five super-computing centers. Declan McCullah in an October 2000 Wired article analyzed the then Vice President's role in the growth of the Internet. He quotes a Salon article that commented in part "The 'Gore claims he invented the Net' trope is so full of holes that it makes you wish there were product recalls for bad information."

Gore had plenty of defenders in his claim to have fostered the development of the Internet - notably many of them were strong supporters of the democratic party. Snopes counts them as reliable. At the same time, he had many (admittedly partisan) people who tried to highlight his claim in mockery, and Snopes ignores most of those. That is not bad in itself, but it should be pointed out to give a good understanding of the reliability of his claim. Snopes here did a lousy job of confirming the claim.

The comment made in my original post was an aside, and thus, almost as a gratuitious comment, is not worthy of response. But I wanted to respond to my reader for two reasons. First, politicians of all stripes are constantly attempting to burnish their records. the reason that legislators allow for co-authors on bills is to allow this to happen. Gore has been particularly adept at claiming responsibility in a number of venues where others suggest his role was less important. One commentator called his role in some of these things as "Zelig-like." (Woody Allen's movie where a nebbish appears in a number of important historical events over a long period of time - but really had no or very little role in those events.) Even Gore had a sense of humor about the flap about his claim. At one point he explained his original quote " I was pretty tired when I made that comment because I had been up very late the night before inventing the camcorder." That quote suggests that Gore was a bit chagrined about his overstatement.

But second, Gore's claim here is important to be criticized because just because he had an interest in technology (which he clearly did) does not mean that his policy solutions made or make sense. Gore was a champion of the "information superhighway" which suggested a series of governmental policies that encouraged a more centralized approach to the encouragement of information technology than many observers would accept. One of the real innovations of the Internet has been its dispersed authority structures. The real innovations of the internet have often been created as a result of its chaotic organizational structure.

In the end the importance of whether Gore had a significant role in this area is not as important as the more fundamental issues of political behavior (that their constant goal is to keep in the public eye and to keep their office) and public policy (just because you were a part of something does not mean you thought about the best ways to implement). In the end those are much more substantive.