> Begin forwarded message: > > From: Mark > Hello, World! It Is ‘I,’ the Internet > When did “the Internet” become “the internet”? Why did that happen, and how > has it changed us? > > MEGHAN O'GIEBLYN > > 12.10.2020 07:00 AM > > https://www.wired.com/story/hello-world-it-is-i-the-internet/ > <https://www.wired.com/story/hello-world-it-is-i-the-internet/> > > SUPPORT REQUEST: > > From : [ 101 ] SWITCHING PROTOCOLS > > Remember when we used to write out “the Internet” with a capital “I”? Now > it's all in lower case, as if the Internet could be any old “internet” at > all. When did this change happen, and why didn't I notice it at the time? > Also, is it possible that the decision (wait, who made it?) to start calling > the Internet the internet reflects—or worse, imposes—a meaningful shift in > how we think about technology? > > CLOUD SUPPORT > > For assistance with your personal problems, moral dilemmas, or philosophical > concerns about encounters with technology, open a support ticket > <mailto:cloudsupp...@wired.com> via email; or register > <https://www.wired.com/account/sign-in?authSource=Coral-Wired&client_id=Coral-Wired> > and post a comment below. > > Dear [ 101 ] , > > I do remember the capital “I” Internet, as do most people, I think, albeit in > that hazy, blinkered way that is typical of our amnesiac present. The > convention now reads as dated, even archaic, like those allusions to Beauty, > Truth, and Nature in Romantic poetry—as though we once endowed the web > (formerly the Web) with all the grandeur of a Platonic form. I don’t think > you’re alone in your confusion about when and how the change happened. > History, even very recent history, is a casualty of our accelerated age. The > newsfeed is forever disappearing into the void, like the Greek parable about > forgetfulness in which a man endlessly braids a straw rope while a donkey, > lurking behind him, eats the completed end. > > It sounds as though you already have some familiarity with the Internet vs. > internet debate. For those who are new to it, I should stress that the > capitalization was not meant to signal transcendence, singularity, or a whiff > of the absolute. Quite the opposite: It underscored that the Internet we used > was just one particular iteration of the larger category of internets, just > as our nation’s Constitution (which we capitalize, like all proper nouns) is > just one of many national constitutions (which, as a generic noun, remains > lowercased). The internet that we know and use today grew out of the > Pentagon’s Arpanet network (aka, the Advanced Research Projects Agency > Network) in the late 1960s, but throughout the '80s and '90s, it was just one > of many instantiations of the Internet protocol suite used by educational and > commercial networks. Eventually, Arpanet would come to be known as Internet. > Once it evolved into the World Wide Web, it was appended with the definite > article—the Internet—though the capital “I” served as an implicit reminder > that it was just one example of the technology, an Internet among internets. > > It is common for technologies to shift from proper nouns to generic ones as > they become incorporated into the culture. Some forward-looking voices > predicted, as early as the late-1990s, that the Internet would succumb to the > same fate as television and radio, mediums that were similarly capitalized at > first, until they became part of our everyday landscape. In 2004, > WIRED.com—then distinct from the print periodical, WIRED magazine—switched to > lower case. (When WIRED magazine’s parent company, Condé Nast, bought the > website two years later, the standard capitalization was reimposed.) It’s > telling that many of the earliest publications to make the switch to > “internet” were magazines that originated online—proving the adage that fish, > least of all, are aware of the water in which they swim. > > I should stress that the capitalization was not meant to signal > transcendence, singularity, or a whiff of the absolute. > > One of the common arguments for decapitalization—that the capital “I” was too > loud and intrusive—mirrored, in an interesting way, the aspirations of > digital technologies themselves. Mark Weiser, the Xerox computer scientist > who coined the term “ubiquitous computing,” spoke longingly of the day when > computers would “vanish into the background,” weaving themselves “into the > fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” As a > growing number of sites and publications began switching to the more > unassuming “internet,” it seemed like a tacit acknowledgement that these > technologies had succeeded in becoming invisible, that we now moved in and > out of cyberspace—a passage once marked, unmistakably, by the foghorn of the > dial-up modem—in the same elegant, unthinking silence that accompanied our > use of electricity or water. After the United Nations declared Internet > access > <https://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/17session/A.HRC.17.27_en.pdf> > a fundamental human right in 2011, the lowercase internet became even more > compelling (despite the fact that the report itself capitalized the word): > The information highway had become just another public good that anyone could > access, like air or city parks, not some imperious proper noun like > Catholicism or the Democratic Party. > > The decisive moment came in 2016, when the Associated Press announced that > its Stylebook would switch to lower case. The Washington Post and The New > York Times quickly followed, for fear of seeming out of step. (So did WIRED > magazine and WIRED.com.) “We want our rules for spelling, punctuation and > usage to be largely invisible,” said the Times. The new convention was, > indeed, so invisible, so seamless, that many people, like you, [101], > remained blissfully unaware of the change—or the outcry from those who > fiercely opposed it. > > Baltimore Sun columnist John McIntyre may have been exaggerating a bit when > he compared > <https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/mcintyre/bal-the-internet-is-down-and-i-dont-care-20160406-story.html> > the capitalization dispute to 16th-century debates about the Real Presence > in the Eucharist, but I completely believe the journalism professor who > described the 2016 American Copy Editors Society’s conference as a “tempest > <https://www.columbiamissourian.com/opinion/local_columnists/dear-reader-taking-down-the-web-and-the-internet-one-capital-at-a-time/article_35e98fb4-fe75-11e5-8567-37f06946e643.html>” > and a “brouhaha.” Those in favor of retaining the upper case insisted, as > they had for years, that the Internet was a unique kind of technology. We > refer to the telephone and the radio as generic nouns because we encounter > many telephones and many radios in everyday life. But when we refer to the > internet, we are almost always referring to a specific entity—the global > network that sprang from Arpanet—not the prototype itself. As former WIRED > editor Marcus Wohlsen put it > <https://www.wired.com/2016/04/ap-finally-realizes-2016-will-let-us-stop-capitalizing-internet/>, > quite emphatically, “There is only one Internet! There is only one Web!” > > In hindsight, it seems to me that these comparisons to other technologies > only confused the issue. The case for the minuscule internet makes more sense > when you stop comparing it to television and radio and consider another > analogy: the sun. Astronomers typically capitalize the word to distinguish it > from the billions of other suns that exist in our galaxy. The rest of us, > however, don’t capitalize the word because what other sun would we be > referring to? We know, of course, that there are other suns, but they remain > so far beyond our ordinary frame of reference that we call them “stars.” This > is essentially what happened to the internet: As other iterations faded into > the distant galaxies of history, the internet—our internet—became so > brilliant and consuming, it was difficult to envision what might exist, both > spatially and temporally, beyond its reach. > > Perhaps this is more history than you wanted, but I think it’s important to > remember these discussions, and the reasoning behind them. Former WIRED copy > chief Tony Long was ahead of the curve when he declared > <https://www.wired.com/2004/08/its-just-the-internet-now/>, in 2004, that > when it came to the internet and the web, “there is no earthly reason to > capitalize … Actually, there never was.” The notion that there is not only no > reason, but no history behind the way we, as a culture, speak and write about > this technology has now become common wisdom—part of the dominant mythology > of a digital age that is continually swallowing up the past. > > Something that is often missed in this debate is that switching to lower case > is also a way to naturalize a word. As the philosophy and law professor Kwame > Anthony Appiah pointed out > <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/time-to-capitalize-blackand-white/613159/> > recently in The Atlantic, lowercase words do not merely signal generality > but “natural kinds.” Proper nouns tend to be concepts and entities that have > significance to human culture—names of cities, people, historical > ages—whereas natural elements like plutonium or water remain lowercased. > Appiah was making a case for the capitalization of race—he argues that both > Black and White should be capitalized, as a way to underscore that these > categories are socially and historically constructed. > > It’s all too easy today to think of the internet as a force of nature, as > inexorable as the wind, as invisible as the air that we breath. And yet > naturalizing technologies leads not only to invisibility but to erasure: of > history, of ideology, of the many roads not taken. To answer your question, > [101], about whether this seemingly innocuous formality might change the way > we see technology itself, I would answer with a resounding yes. The capital > Internet, in its insistence on specificity, contained within it the memory of > alternatives. It evoked, for those who cared to understand, the spirit of > possibility that was characteristic of the early days of the web, before it > solidified into the commercialized, mass-surveillance machine we use today. > It was a reminder that other visions of this technology have existed in the > past—and perhaps that they still might come into fruition in the future. As > Emily Brewster, an associate editor at Merriam-Webster, noted > <https://newrepublic.com/article/122384/stop-capitalizing-word-internet> in > 2015, the capital Internet implied that “someone could find another way to > connect us all to cat videos and personality quizzes, and then we’d have an > Internet alternative.” > > It’s all too easy today to think of the internet as a force of nature, as > inexorable as the wind, as invisible as the air that we breath. > > The truth is that an alternative is already in the works. China has drawn up > blueprints for its own internet, a top-down designed global network with more > censorship and political control, which some experts fear will allow > state-owned service providers to monitor and surveil every device connected > to it. The writer and Harvard professor Shoshanna Zuboff has called > <https://www.ft.com/content/ba94c2bc-6e27-11ea-9bca-bf503995cd6f> the plan > “frightening,” though she acknowledges that the current internet, “a > market-led capitalist version based on surveillance,” is also deeply flawed. > She argues that Europe and North America need to unite and construct a new, > more democratic, and more transparent internet framework that will offer a > third way between these two possibilities. “We need a western web that will > offer the kind of vision of a digital future that is compatible with > democracy,” she said earlier this year. “This is the work of the next decade.” > > What might this new model might look like, in practice? The truth is, I don’t > know. The more digital technologies succeed in becoming invisible, the more > difficult it is to imagine concrete architectures that might radically change > how we experience them. But I would like to believe that there is, somewhere > beyond our own digital galaxy, other visions of the internet yet to be > discovered—perhaps even one (dare we imagine it?) that does not consist of > cat videos and personality quizzes. While we cannot force the culture to > reclaim the grammatical conventions it has abandoned, it is possible to > retain this spirit of possibility in one’s mental life. In his 1996 manifesto > “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” John Perry Barlow called the > internet “the new home of Mind,” a term he capitalized, as though to identify > it as a parallel frontier, one whose only boundaries are the limits of > thought, language, and imagination. > > Yours faithfully, > > Cloud > >
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