Some of Crovitz’s errors seem to stem from technological ignorance; in arguing that Xerox’s graphical machines were in some way responsible for the design of the Internet, Crovitz seems to conflate the Internet and the World Wide Web. The Web is the system of linked, usually graphical documents you see in a Web browser – i.e., sites like Slate. The Internet is the network over which the Web and other communications systems – e-mail, instant messaging, file-sharing – travel. The Internet predated the Web.

Farhad Manjoo on Slate debunking a predictable WSJ op-ed on how the internet wasn’t actually invented by the government (bonus predictability: that it’d be Slate doing the debunking)