http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,39301,00.html
The Mother of Gore's Invention by Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
[deletia uber alles]
Many portions -- discussions of universal service, wiring classrooms to the Net, and antitrust actions -- are surprisingly relevant even today. (That's an impressive enough feat that we might even forgive Gore his tortured metaphors such as "road kill on the information superhighway" and "parked at the curb" on the information superhighway.)
I'll stake my claim right here. Very shortly after Algore called the Internet the "Information Superhighway", I called FIDOnet "the Information Jeep-Trail."
But it's also difficult to argue with a straight face that the Internet we know today would not exist if Gore had decided to practice the piano instead of politics.
By the time Gore took notice of the Net around 1987, the basics were already in place. The key protocol, TCP/IP, was written and the culture of the Net had blossomed through Usenet and mailing lists, as chronicled in Eric Raymond's Jargon File. At best, Gore's involvement merely hastened its development.
I ask this, what I believe would be an excellent idea for an article: Why didn't the Internet develop even faster than it actually did? 9600 bps modems existed in 1986, not all that far in performance behind 28Kbps units. By 1986, numerous clones of the IBM PC and AT existed. Compare this with the breakout of the fax machines in the 1985-86 timeframe. I wish I had the numbers, but it seemed like at the beginning of 1985 few companies had faxes, while by the end of that year "every" company did. By the end of 1986 that had spread to individuals, as well. I'm not suggesting some sort of vast conspiracy to keep the Internet small. But I think it could be found that 3-4 years were effectively wasted. I really want to know what the impediments to the Internet were in the 1986-1993 time frame. Jim Bell