Just a note regarding the supreme irony in the unfolding McCain/Blackberry story. Wired has now posted a news item that begins:

Al Gore may have invented the internet, but it's Republican presidential candidate John McCain we have to thank for the “miracle” of the BlackBerry, his top economic adviser said Tuesday.

It's false to claim that Al Gore ever said he invented the Internet. An entire books could be filled with the detailed debunking of that story. But Wired doesn't seem to care. And Wired today isn't alone. Lots of news orgs are having fun with the McCain story by comparing to Gore's claim of inventing the Internet.

The deep irony is that it was a Wired News report in 1999 that officially kicked off the Al Gore-invented-the-Internet charade because it was a Wired reporter who took Gore's overlooked comments made on CNN about the creation of the Internet and suggested Gore had taken credit for it; a Wired claim the GOP then picked up, inserted the word “invented,” and and then pushed to an eager press corps.

Days later Wired News returned to the story and reported Gore “claimed to have invented the Internet.”

Nine years later and Wired is still trafficking the falsehood.