can we "de-capitalize" the Internet ?

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "W. Curtiss Priest" <bmslib () mit edu>


WHO OWNS THE INTERNET? YOU AND I DO
Joseph Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at
the
University of Pennsylvania, has begun a small crusade to de-capitalize
Internet - and, by extension, to acknowledge a deep shift in the way
that we
think about the online world. "The capitalization of things seems to
place
an inordinate, almost private emphasis on something," he said, turning
it
into a Kleenex or a Frigidaire. "The Internet, at least philosophically,
should not be owned by anyone," he said, calling it "part of the neural
universe of life."
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: John Schwartz]
2002/12/29/weekinreview

from benton.org, full article follows:

["fair use," "teachable moment," "archival," Section 107(a), 1976
Copyright Act and 1998 Digital Millennium Act]

SOMETHING will be missing when Joseph Turow's book about families and
the Internet is published by M.I.T. Press next spring: The capital I
that usually begins the word "Internet."

Mr. Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at
the University of Pennsylvania, studies how people use online
technology and how that affects their lives. He has begun a small
crusade to de-capitalize Internet -- and, by extension, to acknowledge
a deep shift in the way that we think about the online world. "I think
what it means is it's part of the everyday universe," he said.

Capitalization irked him because, he said, it seemed to imply that
reaching into the vast, interconnected ether was a brand-name
experience. 

"The capitalization of things seems to place an inordinate, almost
private emphasis on something," he said, turning it into a Kleenex or
a Frigidaire. "The Internet, at least philosophically, should not be
owned by anyone," he said, calling it "part of the neural universe of
life." 

But, he said, dropping the big I would sent a deeper message to the
world: The revolution is over, and the Net won. It's part of
everyone's life, and as common as air and water (neither of which
starts with a capital).

Some elements of the online world have already made the transition.
Internet often appears with a lowercase I on the Internet itself --
but then, spelling online is dreadful, u kno.

Although most everybody still capitalizes World Wide Web, words like
"website," and the online journals known as weblogs (or, simply,
blogs) are increasingly lowercase. Of course, the Internet's capital I
is virtually engraved in stone, since Microsoft Word automatically
capitalizes the lowercase "i" unless a user overrides its settings.

For Mr. Turow, the first step in his campaign was persuading his book
editor to enlist. She compromised, dropping to lowercase in newly
written parts and retaining the capital in older articles reproduced
in the book. 

Then he nudged Steven Jones, a communications professor at the
University of Illinois at Chicago and president of the Association of
Internet Researchers. Mr. Jones was cool to the idea, until he looked
at copies of Scientific American from the late 19th century, and
noticed that words for new technologies, like Phonograph, were often
uppercased. 

Today, Mr. Jones is a crusader himself.

"I think the moment is right," he said, to treat the Internet "the way
we refer to television, radio and the telephone."

He shared his view with a few hundred close friends last month at a
meeting of the National Communication Association, an educators'
group. "I just noticed everybody's attention kind of snapped forward,"
he said. 

"I'm used to having people say nice things," he said. "We're scholars,
not wrestlers. But this time I was struck by the number of people who
were saying the equivalent of, 'Right on!' "

DICTIONARY editors, though, have dismissed Mr. Turow politely but
firmly. 

Dictionaries do not generally see themselves as making the rules, said
Jesse Sheidlower, who runs the American offices of the Oxford English
Dictionary. 

"What dictionaries do is reflect what's out there," he said. He and
his fellow dictionary editors would think seriously about such changes
after newspapers make them, he added.

That could take a while. Allan M. Siegal, a co-author of The New York
Times Manual of Style and Usage and an assistant managing editor at
the newspaper, said that "there is some virtue in the theory" that
Internet is becoming a generic term, "and it would not be surprising
to see the lowercase usage eclipse the uppercase within a few years."

He said, however, that the newspaper was unlikely to make any change
that was not supported by authoritative dictionaries.

Time to ask Robert Kahn, who is as responsible as anyone for the
creation of the Internet, having helped plan the original network that
preceded it and having created, with Vinton Cerf, the language of
computer networks, known as TCP/IP, that allowed the vast
knitting-together of systems that gave birth to the modern medium.

He cares deeply about the name, having led a fight for years to ensure
that its use is not restricted or abused by the corporation that
received the trademark in 1989.

A settlement was reached two years ago with the company now known as
Concord EFS. The company agreed that it would not dun people who used
the word, which meant that "Internet" now belongs to everybody, Mr.
Kahn said. 

"We defended the right of people to use the word 'Internet' for what
we think of as the Internet," he said.

THAT was the important fight, according to Mr. Kahn. "Whether you use
a cap I or little I" hardly matters, he said.

Which leads us back to a profound question for Mr. Turow: Don't you
have anything better to do?

"That's a really interesting question," he said. "I was an English
major. I'm very sensitive to the nuances of words, and I'm very
concerned about the nuances, the feel that words have within the
society." 

Fair enough; Perhaps the next big thing, after all, will be small. At
least initially. 



-- 


           W. Curtiss Priest, Director, CITS
      Center for Information, Technology & Society
         466 Pleasant St., Melrose, MA  02176
         Voice: 781-662-4044  BMSLIB () MIT EDU
      Fax: 781-662-6882 WWW: http://Cybertrails.org


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