[AusNOG] SMH: "No room at the internet"

[Mark Smith]

On Wed, 19 May 2010 09:56:28 +1000
"Bevan Slattery" <Bevan.Slattery at staff.pipenetworks.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> > All up, it's enough to make you cringe (starting with the 
> > lack of a capital I in the subject, it goes downhill from 
> > there), but there are some good quotes from Geoff Huston...
> 

> Sheesh.  The thing that makes me cringe a bit is people who still insist
> that internet should start with a capital "I".  As the Wikipedia entry
> found here
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_capitalization_conventions
> acknowledges 
> 
> "Critics of the usage as a proper noun argue that other things that are
> unique yet distributed, such as "the power grid", "the telephone
> network", and even "the sky", are not considered proper nouns, and are
> thus not capitalized. Since at least 2002 it has been theorized that
> Internet has been changing from a proper noun to a generic term.[4]
> Words for new technologies, such as Phonograph in the 19th century, are
> sometimes capitalized at first, later becoming uncapitalized.[4] It was
> suggested as early as 1999 that Internet might, like some other commonly
> used proper nouns, lose its capital letter."
> 
> You will note that the SMH along with the Economist, Financial Times and
> the Guardian also use the non-capitalised version.
> 
> IMHO to raise the 'internet' as proper noun fails to acknowledge the
> work and investment by this exact industry to make it generic or
> ubiquitous.  For me the same applies to [E]ethernet.  If you want to use
> capitals, then go ahead.  If you don't, don't.  But don't pick people up
> for using lower case "i", because you'll be in the the same category as
> Jen from the IT Crowd http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTBsm0LzSP0 or
> those who doubted Kyle on South Park
> http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/166192 :)
> 

An internet (short for internetwork) is a network of networks. ASIOs
network of networks would be an internet. The Internet is is the
publicly accessible network of networks - and ASIOs internet is
guaranteed not to ever be plugged into the Internet ;-)