[ih] The web as wind and whirlwind? (was Re: History from 1960s to 2025)

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Sun, Dec 21, 2025 at 05:33:22PM -0500, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
>A subsidiary question is when, and why, the Internet became the internet.

Depending on whom you ask, it never did.  The Internet Society and the IETF both still capitalize the Internet.  The Wikipedia article on this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization_of_Internet) is actually pretty good. I never understood the argument about lowercasing it though: none of the people who want that think that "the Constitution" should be lower-case when referring to the US one, or "the King" should be lower-case when referring (today) to Charles III.  The Internet is an internet just as the Constitution is a constitution and the King is a king.  None of Wired, AP, nor the NYT has ever even tried to address this point.  (Of course, this has essentially nothing to do with technology and everything to do with another thing that is the Internet's fault, which is that nobody reads any more. Convention would demand a smiley here, but my cranky censor won't permit it.)

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at crankycanuck.ca