Al Gore May Have Invented The Internet, But McCain Invented The Blackberry

• September 16, 2008

Stupid…

MIAMI – Move over, Al Gore. You may lay claim to the Internet, but John McCain helped create the BlackBerry.
At least that’s the contention of a top McCain policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Waving his BlackBerry personal digital assistant and citing McCain’s work as a senator, he told reporters Tuesday, “You’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.”
McCain has acknowledged that he doesn’t know how to use a computer and can’t send e-mail, one of the BlackBerry’s prime functions.

The point here was to combat suggestions from the Obama campaign that McCain is too old to understand the issues and policies surrounding the communications and internet industries. Holtz-Eakin is saying that McCain’s service on the Senate Commerce Committee (which oversees telecommunications issues) helped create the Blackberry.
Which is pretty absurd. Smart people working for profits in the private sector created the Blackberry, not politicians sitting at desks in Washington. And frankly, it’s a little insulting for any politician to take credit for a technological innovation that was developed in the private sector. As if it were taxes and regulations, and not the desire to supply the public with quality and affordable products that they want, that lead to innovation.
It’s a decidedly non-conservative idea, and one that’s troubling coming out of the McCain campaign.

Tags: Domestic Issues, Politics

http://Array Jerry

The Aid should not have made that statement without explaining how McCain helped create it.
Pretty BoneHeaded think to say, really.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, should be Fired.
carrick

Hawk, the internet existed a full ten years before that legislation.

Get a sense of history to go with your needed sense of humor.
http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/author/realitybasedbob/ realitybasedbob

“You’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.”
Hawk

Hawk get a sense of humor. Gore took undue credit for the rise of the internet.

He claimed that legislation he sponsored was instrumental in the formation of the internet. That is true. It is what we want politicians to do, run on their record. The right lied.
Bat One

Total bullshit…. Carrick is full of shit!

H,

Your point, however well taken, would be a whole lot more credible were it not for your reputation… and Gore’s. Yours for spiteful assault on anyone with whom you disagree and a penchant for pointless quibble simply to win an argument…. any argument… even one you yourself started for that express reason. With you its a kind of rhetorical dodgeball… played with brickbats. Gore is notorious for his self-aggrandizing exaggeration, from his claims regarding the internet, to his claims regarding Eric Seagle’s book “Love Story,” to his claims of fighting wildfires in west Texas, re-inventing government… and on, and on, and on.

Both penchants, his and yours, garner not the admiration intended, but something between pity and contempt. between ridicule and resentment at the insult.
Hawk

The difference is that Al Gore never actually claimed to invent the internet. That was a lie.
carrick

An expose on Gore’s claim to have taking the initiative in “creating the internet”.

Everybody knows that he never claimed to actually invent it. It’s just funnier to say it that way.

The article is worth a read because it is really a testimonial to the free market system, and speaks against the effectiveness of government tampering with markets. (There’s a lot more I could say on this, but Gore’s information-system highways was in many respects a disaster.)
carrick

From the linked article, for which mysteriously, Lassner’s name never appears. On the actual origins of the internet:

Preliminary discussions of how the ARPANET would be designed began in 1967, and a request for proposals went out the following year. In 1969, the Defense Department commissioned the ARPANET. Gore was 21-years-old at the time. He wasn’t even done with law school at Vanderbilt University. It would be eight more years before

Gore would be elected to the US House of Representatives as a freshman Democrat with scant experience in passing legislation, let alone ambitious proposals.

By that time, file copying — via the UUCP protocol — was beginning. Email was flourishing. The culture of the Internet was starting to develop through the Jargon File and the SF-Lovers mailing list.

Of course, politicians weren’t completely unaware of the Internet.

According to one account, when Senator Ted Kennedy learned in 1968 that Massachusetts-based BBN had won the ARPA contract for an “interface message processor,” he sent a congratulatory telegram. It thanked the upstanding folks at BBN for their ecumenical spirit in devising an “interfaith message processor.”

On Gore’s role:

“Gore played no positive role in the decisions that led to the creation of the Internet as it now exists — that is, in the opening of the Internet to commercial traffic,” said Steve Allen, vice president for communications at the conservative Progress and Freedom Foundation.

Yeah, I’m full of shit. And so is everybody in the world except Hannitized, apparently.

Laughing in your face, H. You got p@wned. Epic fail.
Hannitized

Bat, everything that Carrick said that was cool, you ruined it.

In short, I really could care less what you think about my approach to laying out the facts. Gore played a major role in helping the internet, as we know it today, develop. Deal with it.
carrick

Hawk get a sense of humor. Gore took undue credit for the rise of the internet. Though he deserves some, he deserves a measure of ridicule for his self-aggrandizing exaggerations.

If you read the article you find it was a quip that a humor-impaired reporter took seriously.
carrick

H:

Total bullshit. I worked with Vint and I also am a friend of Dr. David Lassner here in HawaII, both whom spent the blood sweat and tears developing protocols for the NSFnet and taking advantage of it’s connectivity.

What dishonest tripe, you lying hack. You substitute “NSFnet” for “internet” and you didn’t think we would notice? A

nd you appeal to your “friend” “David Lassner”? Nice example of “appeal to authority”, which everybody here recognizes as a particularly weak form of argument.

Which protocols did he develop btw? I find this an especially interesting claim of yours considering the protocols date back to 1972, well before NSFnet.

Bottom line is as usual, you’re totally clueless and you substitute your usual childish argument style for the supporting facts that you have such a hard time finding.

Beyond that, I’m not wasting my time responding to your slathering dreck. That would be totally pointless considering nobody here believes a word you say, and you likely don’t either.

By a clue and get a life.
imagine

by his own admission, McCain is a “Techno-tard”.
carrick

RBB:

“You’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.”

“Sarah! I AM YOUR FATHER.”
Hannitized

Hawk get a sense of humor. Gore took undue credit for the rise of the internet. Though he deserves some, he deserves a measure of ridicule for his self-aggrandizing exaggerations.

Total bullshit. I worked with Vint and I also am a friend of Dr. David Lassner here in HawaII, both whom spent the blood sweat and tears developing protocols for the NSFnet and taking advantage of it’s connectivity.

They both insist that Gore helped fund that project and also the idea of moving this and ARPA from private to semi-private and it’s potential commercial use.

Essentially what we know today has everything to do with the funding Gore helped shore up and the hard work of the internets fathers.

Carrick is full of shit!
crshedd

mccain did such a great job of making america a place of innovation that a CANADIAN company (research in motion) invented the blackberry.

way to go, john.
http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/author/realitybasedbob/ realitybasedbob

Vinton G. Cerf, a senior vice president at MCI Worldcom and the person most often called “the father of the Internet” for his part in designing the network’s common computer language, said in an e-mail interview yesterday, “I think it is very fair to say that 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.”

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Al Gore May Have Invented The Internet, But McCain Invented The Blackberry

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