Wanderer said, "Of course, Al Gore invented the internet..."
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This mendacious GOP misquotation of Al Gore says far more about the abysmal personal ethics and educational level of the person who uses it, than about Al Gore.

Gore, himself, did not make that claim-- the GOP did. Their spin factory simply lied in an RNC press release, hoping illiterates would pick up their partisan misquotation and pass it along.

During a CNN interview, Gore said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet"-- a claim that even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich verifies as true, because Gingrich knows Gore refers to a legislative, not a technical role.

Those who were listening to the Wolf Blitzer interview never thought Gore took credit for the technical side of what some mistakenly call the "web". However, Gore clearly did take early congressional leadership in pushing federal development of the nation's first high speed computer network-- the foundation of what eventually became the internet.

Gore as chairman of a key science subcommittee (1986) facilitated establishment of five supercomputer centers through the National Science Foundation, centers which became the cornerstone of the Internet.

To those GOP bozos who deny the importance of government in science and technology, here is an article that provides urgently needed perspective--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Computing_Act_of_1991

and this--
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/07/23/yes-government-researchers-really-did-invent-the-internet/

and this--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore
"Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn noted that, 'as far back as the 1970s, Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. 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.'

"Gore introduced the Supercomputer Network Study Act of 1986. He also sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises.

"As a Senator, Gore began to craft the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 (commonly referred to as "The Gore Bill") after hearing the 1988 report Toward a National Research Network submitted to Congress by a group chaired by UCLA 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). The bill was passed on December 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII) which Gore referred to as the "information superhighway."