[ih] Internet or internet i

[Karl Auerbach]

It is largely a matter of personal whim.  (I tend to be somewhat of an 
iconoclast.)  I tend to think of the issue of capitalization the same 
way that Gulliver viewed the dispute between Lilliput and Blefuscu over 
which end of an egg was the proper end be cracked open.

I tend to still use the singular "the" before "internet" but even from 
"the beginning' I worked with ARPAnet near-clones that were separated 
from the more visible networks and never really felt a need to elevate 
one or the other to a level that suggested that there were no others.  
(That notion of separation and non-uniqueness was accentuated by my 
contact with military networks that were nearly 100% the same technology 
as the then nascent internet but were highly isolated.)

I would note, however, that in my note on where the internet might be 
going (https://www.cavebear.com/cavebear-blog/internet_quo_vadis/) I 
posited another crank of the evolution of the net (which began pretty 
much as one network, then became a network of networks) to be a network 
of internets (or a network of networks of networks.)

This fracturing of what once could deserve the capital 'I' of Internet 
has me greatly concerned - I am a fan of the end to end principle - but 
also reconciled to the fact that social and economic forces often 
overcome technical elegance.

     --karl--


On 3/10/19 5:30 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:
>
> On Sun, Mar 10, 2019 at 7:20 PM Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com 
> <mailto:karl at cavebear.com>> wrote:
>
>      the internet
>
>
> Hi Karl
> With due respect, and hoping not to cause a ruckus, may I ask how you 
> came to drop the capitalization of Internet, or did you never use it?
>
> joly
>
>
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
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