"Even if that was all it was yes, that would count as it existing."
Umm, it was totally different yet still the same.
Ok, I suppose...
"But it was more tha a few dozen computers by the time the money from the initiative Gore supported was being spent to expand the network."
It also wasn't ARPAnet either. You are confusing times, protocols and goals, here. That doesn't make a stronger argument, you know. Gore's influence didn't begin and end with the act that funded the backbone. He was promoting the idea for more than a decade before then.
"we have changed protocols since Gore's involvement, and we will again."
We have? When? The only change I know of is IPv6, and we haven't changed to it. And it is more of an extension than an actual change.
What protocols will we be changing to? Or, are you just pulling this out of the air?
"Because its irrelevant"
No, it wasn't irrelevant. It was what guaranteed the success of the web. And the web is what drove the Internet to where it is today.
"but if it wasn't created by the the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, some one else would have created some different piece of software."
Which may not have supported HTML and very well could have supported something proprietary. And that would have resulted in something very different. HyperCard, for example, was great technology. In many ways superior to HTML. As it was, it did influence the web. Now, imagine a web controlled by Apple. Things would have turned out very different.
Again, there was nothing inevitable about the way the Internet developed. For a while, a patchwork of proprietary systems with little interoperability seemed to be where we were going. Open source and open standards were getting very little traction. But, that changed and Gore was an important key.
"Your argument is like saying if Wordstar wasn't invented we wouldn't have PC word processor software."
Now you are just being silly. My argument is nothing like this. Wordstar is not a dominant word processor, and hasn't even been sold for years. While it was popular in its heyday, it wasn't revolutionary in any sense of the word. |
