In Their Own Words?

Excerpts from Vice President Al Gore's address at Wednesday's celebration in honor of the 50th anniversary of ENIAC, the world's first large-scale general-purpose electronic computer. Gore spoke to a capacity crowd in Irvine Auditorium for about 40 minutes, before proceeding to the Moore Building to ceremonially switch on some surviving components of the original machine. editorial The invention of the computer dramatically increased our ability to handle large quantities of information. But the early years of the computer age were accompanied by so much difficulty in understanding the capacities that computers gave to us? But as the power of computers increased, we encountered a new problem. If these computers are going to create patterns that contain this much information, how can those patterns be communicated from one computer to another, from one computer to a person not located in the same room? In the days of the ENIAC, those who wanted to use the computer had to be in the room with the ENIAC or within a short distance to check in on the answer when it arrived. The metaphor of the information superhighway came from that project [Arpanet, the predecessor of the Internet, developed by the Defense Department for scientists to share information and maintain communication in the event of nuclear attack]. In the early years, no business in America was willing to invest in an information superhighway. I know because I asked them and talked to them. There was interest expressed by one corporation: Corning Glass. ?almost by accident. E-mail was a serendipitous, quirky but eventually useful afterthought. I bet a very large percentage of the people in this audience use e-mail today. I use e-mail; I communicate with my children in college on e-mail today. The funding for Mosaic itself came from the higher education computing and communications initiative, again out of the House and Senate as part of the federal research and development program passed those many, many years ago. At the time I and others worked on this endeavor, we had no idea that it would lead to hundreds of thousands of home pages so quickly, on everything from smashing atoms to the Smashing Pumpkins, and everything from Albert Einstein to Jennifer Anniston. Nobody had any idea? But that wasn't the point. The point, again, is that 'You can't start a fire without a spark.' And time after time in the United States of America, the spark of innovation that has led to multi-billion dollar industries has been the desire of the American people to work through self-government to spark good ideas. That's how it has worked in America. Government has often supplied the initial investment in individuals and companies that have provided the creativity and innovation into a blaze of progress and productivity that is the envy of the entire world. On and on it went -- prosperity generated investment, investment generated answers and answers generated further prosperity. Now there is an argument in Washington, D.C., and in our country, about whether or not we should continue providing this spark of innovation with a public commitment and added levels of investment in science and technology, in research and development. Because this is fundamentally a political argument, I want to say that I strongly disagree with the current leadership of the United States Congress, which has proposed reducing federal funding for civilian science and technology by one-third by the year 2002.