http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_technology
"Gore's legislation also helped fund the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, where a team of programmers, including Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, created the Mosaic Web browser, the commercial Internet's technological springboard. 'If it had been left to private industry, it wouldn't have happened,' Andreessen says of Gore's bill, 'at least, not until years later"
"Of Gore's involvement in the then-developing Internet while in Congress, Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn have also noted that,
As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high-speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship [...] the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1993. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises"
So yes, he did sponsor, write, and support legislation that helped create the internet. It's a fact like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. There is no internet across the country (and world) without government support, and Al Gore was one of the catalysts in government to get it going. Could he have said it in a less dickish way and in a manner that made it seem like there were others in support of those programs? Yup. But at the end of the day, he still did, in a very literal sense, help create the internet.
