Al Gore, former U.S. Vice President and an early proponent of government
funding for the Internet, joined personal-computer maker Apple
Computer Inc.’s board.
Gore, who uses Apple’s Macintosh PCs, helped popularize the
term “Information Superhighway” and fought to get federal funds
to help build what became the Internet, Apple said in a statement.
Apple spokeswoman Lynn Fox declined to elaborate.
Gore fashioned himself as a leader in promoting technology by stressing the industry’s role in economic growth and using the
2000 presidential campaign to tout plans to make education and job
training a priority in the federal budget. He has been criticized
as exaggerating his role in fostering the Internet.
“With all of the growth, and all the new dynamism and creativity, we’re actually replacing steel and rubber and plastic
and materials with knowledge and creativity,” Gore said in a
Sept. 5, 2000, campaign speech. Gore did defect from the Mac, according to a February, 2000,
Associated Press story. Asked in a town-hall-style forum whether he preferred a PC or a Mac, Gore said it was a “kind of a high-tech boxers-or-briefs question” and that he “finally” switched
from a Mac because new programs were available more quickly for
PCs.
“Apple seems to be coming back with the iMac, don’t you
think?” Gore told Michael Phillips, a 19-year-old Mac user who
posed the question, according to the AP.
“This is a non-event,” said Gus Zinn, an analyst a Waddell & Reed Financial Inc., which owns Apple shares. “I don’t
understand what he would ever do for the business.”
Gore serves as a senior adviser to Web search service Google Inc. He is a visiting professor at the University of California
Los Angeles, Fisk University and Middle Tennessee State University.
Bloomberg News
