I think this internet thing is gonna work out. Thank heaven Al Gore thought of it. Where would we be without Al? To be honest, some in the media falsely accused him of claiming he developed the system. If you do a google search, you’ll find this: Former U.S. vice president Al Gore never claimed that he “invented” the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The legend arose from critics and pundits who plucked a relatively credible statement Gore made during the course of an interview, altered its wording, and stripped it of context to make it seem a ridiculously self-serving falsehood.
The truth is Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn, two computer scientists, are credited with inventing the system we call the Internet. It’s beginning dates back to the 1960’s but these two guys developed the protocols to pull it off. And how do I know this? I looked it up on the Internet.
I was Superintendent in Britton-Macon throughout the nineties. My first big initiative was to build a state-of-the-art media center. We didn’t have the cash, so I convinced the board to borrow the funds through a revenue bond. We’d pay the bond off over time much like how people pay off a mortgage. We didn’t have to ask for the community’s permission. We could just do it. So, after much discussion, we did.
The truth of the matter was the school was in disrepair when I arrived. Funding was scarce so repairs were made as things broke. There was no plan to make improvements. They were getting by as best they could. My vision was to make the new center a point of pride for the school. We’d keep it open after school so everyone could use it, and it would have the latest technology. The internet was a relatively new concept in education.
One evening, as I was waiting for a school board meeting to begin, I fired up a computer and started poking around. I don’t know how I got there, but I accessed an art museum in Italy. I don’t recall the museum’s name or the artworks I viewed. I was just thoroughly impressed that I could travel around the world in a split second to view something created hundreds of years ago. I didn’t have to travel there, but I could see it on my computer. And it was live!
Another time, I watched two groups of students gathered around a computer on either end of the center. They were ninth grade boys, and they were giggling like seventh grade girls, so I knew something was up. They were so engrossed in what they were doing, they didn’t even know I was there. I walked up behind each group to make sure that they hadn’t accessed some porn site. They hadn’t.
They had, however, located a “chat room”. A chat room is an area on the internet where users can communicate. Participants are typically limited to a specific topic. On this day, the topic was sex. One group was typing a provocative message and sending it off for others somewhere in the world to find. What they didn’t know was the “others that found it” were on the other side of the room. One group typed and the other read the message, giggled a bit, and sent a response. They thought they were sending their message somewhere around the world, when in fact, it went up to a satellite, and bounced back down to the other side of the room. They were oblivious to one another until I interceded. They were totally embarrassed, and because they violated our acceptable use policy, they loss their computer access for a while.
Over the past thirty-years technology has boomed. The internet has expanded beyond belief, and we have a plethora of electronic devices to access it. So, if that’s true, consider this query I found on the internet.
Question: If someone from the 1950s, back when the Detroit Lions enjoyed their last run at success, suddenly appeared, what would be the most challenging thing to explain to them about life today?
Answer: I possess a device in my pocket that can access all the information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get into arguments with strangers.
And while that’s true for some of us, others spend at least a portion of our Sundays and Wednesdays reading blogs like this. Thanks Al.