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Comment by u801e | Hacker News Reader

Al Gore may not have invented the internet, but he did come up with algorithms.

mildly interestingly, the word "algorithm" is actually someone's name, mangled:

> 1690s, "Arabic system of computation," from French algorithme, refashioned (under mistaken connection with Greek arithmos "number") from Old French algorisme "the Arabic numeral system" (13c.), from Medieval Latin algorismus, a mangled transliteration of Arabic al-Khwarizmi "native of Khwarazm" (modern Khiva in Uzbekistan), surname of the mathematician whose works introduced sophisticated mathematics to the West (see algebra). - https://www.etymonline.com/word/algorithm

Underappreciated; was a new one for me.

To explain algorithms a little more clearly to less mathematical students I actually introduce traditional logarithms in case they are not familiar, in terms that are easier to understand.

For instance in a remote river with lumberjacks dancing on logjams without falling in the water, that's a type of logarithm at work.

When Al Gore does it, that's an algorithm.

I do not get that one. US-Insider?

> "Al Gore-ithms"

Ah ..

I think it should be pronounced "Al-Gore-isms."

Al Gore was ridiculed for saying he invented the Internet (he didn't say that). The rest of the joke is playing off of that and then punning with his name.

To be fair Gore claimed he 'took the initiative in creating the internet'. His choice of words were not good I think.

If that were the only sentence in the statement, sure. But read the rest (which I believe you found if you can quote it) and it's clear what he's saying unless your objective is to misquote it and ridicule him.

"I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

That's what I read from Wikipedia, I do not really see how this changes the statement.

Definitively a poor choice of words. What he really meant was "I funded ARPANET, the basis for the Internet"

Better, but still a bit shaky. Probabl 'I refunded Arpanet...' (in 1991 Gore Bill). Arpanet was started in 1966, and he is not that old. It is clear Gore was an important supporter of the expansion of the internet, but it is hard to put it in a catchphrase with doesnt sound like 'first I created heaven and earth...'

I agree with GP. The statement made sense to Gore but not to the bulk of his audience. The missing context isn’t in the words that follow. It’s in understanding the role Gore actually took in the creation of the internet; specifically to be its economic, legal, and political champion for basically decades.

Al-gore-ithms.

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