OK. Al Gore didn’t invent the Internet.  But he has been more influential in networking than many people realize.

Gore, Bill Gates, Bob Metcalfe, Ray Noorda, these were folks making waves back in 1986, when Network World was launched.

Their vision, verve and tenacity helped shape the industry we know today, and for that they deserve some extra recognition.

In terms of the leading personalities of 1986, it would be hard to ignore Sen. Al Gore. In March of that year he sponsored the Supercomputer Network Study Act, a plan to get the nation's resources linked to a national network. The bill wouldn't become law for two years, but it was only the beginning of his efforts.

"Libraries, rural schools, minority institutions and vocational education programs will have access to the same national resources - databases, supercomputers, accelerators - as more affluent and better-known institutions," he said at the time.

This is the legislation he referred to in a 1999 interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "During my service in the U.S. Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

While that quote was later twisted out of proportion and he received a lot of heat for it, you'd be hard pressed to find a politician that had as much influence over the development of today's Internet as Gore.

For example, in 1991 he led the push for the High Performance Computing and Communications Act. Known as the "Gore Act," it supported the National Research and Education Network initiative that became one of the major vehicles for the spread of the Internet beyond the computer science realm. A variety of other technology legislation bares his mark as well.

Today the "recovering politician" can be found helping to run his cable and satellite venture, Current TV, which encourages anyone with videos to upload them for the Current TV community. It hosts interactive blogs and a variety of other media activities mostly targeted at younger people.

Gore recently appeared in the environmental documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," which was the buzz at the recent Sundance Film Festival.