No, really ... who invented the Internet?

Remember Al Gore's famously distorted, misquoted, and media-warped charge, circa the 2000 presidential campaign, that he "invented the Internet"? [The original wording, as liberal pundits have been since vigilant about pointing out, was that he, while acting in the capacity of United States congressman, consistently backed, championed, and initiated legislation which "helped to create the Internet," in his own words ... thanks, Al Franken, for clearing that one up for me.] Well, as it turns out, and as we probably all have since come to understand, Al Gore did not, in fact, "invent" the Internet ... but then again, it seems that no one else really did, either.

Janet Abbate's book labors hard on the side of an "invention" narrative, the kind we saw with Briggs and Burke whose "solitary genius" determinist logic led us through history in terms of names, dates, and respective "inventions". This is not the "invention" of Paul Starr, who wanted us to believe that our media are a group of democratically inspired "creations" stemming from public sphere debate and demand. But while Abbate, in her introduction, mentions "the cast of characters involved in creating the Internet" (2) -- Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn, Lawrence Roberts, Tim Berners-Lee and, apparently, the entire National Science Foundation acting as a composite entity, are some highlighted members of this "cast" -- we don't catch much of the legislative/political story from Abbate. Chapter 6, "Popularizing the Internet," begins to sketch this medium's ascendance in popular culture and American life, stating how the Internet "would be transferred from military to civilian control," but it never really gets around to actually showing us this transformation in a socially intelligible manner. Likewise, she explains the Internet's eventual worldwide status and ubiquity in terms of "the convergence of many streams of network developments" (209), as though to say that the world was ready and waiting to accept this new medium without legislative intervention, political struggle, or social consequence. And I'm pretty sure that just isn't the case.

At any rate, I am interested, and annoyed, by the varying centrality of this kind of invention narrative in some of our readings this semester. It is, in many ways, a very traditional way of doing history: names, dates, and places usually amount to "facts" in the high school history textbook sense of the term. And Abbate isn't exactly deviating from this tradition; she is, instead, trying to force it where, perhaps, it just doesn't fit. Inventing the Internet leaves me now wondering if the idea of invention -- a notion "solitary genius" that now ties into concerns such as intellectual property, patent laws, etc. -- even exists anymore. People, it seems, don't invent things anymore, but corporations do and military research teams do.

And, I checked, and Al Gore isn't cited once in Abbate's book. For shame! Read all about how Al Gore kinda sorta invented the internet in this 2000 Washington Monthly article.