Ok, I know that Wired hasn’t had anything technologically reasoned to say in about… a decade, so don’t yell at me for the link. In an attempt to once again buck trends and show their cluelessness, Wired has changed their style to ‘internet’ with a lowercase ‘i’. In typical wannabe techno-geek fashion, their editors have decided that proper nouns are passé. Afterall, since the Internet is not owned by a company, how can it be capitalized? The matter is slightly up for stylistic debate, but the fact that they say “there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words” (also lumping in web and net) shows how technically inept they truly are.
Internets are all around us. Anytime you use a router, you are creating an internet. My intranet here at work is also an internet. The term simply refers to any collection of multiple networks. Once you combine 2 or more networks – voilá, instant internet. However there is only one Internet. Just as dirt is also called earth yet we all live on a planet called Earth, a generic term can be capitalized to signify a particular unique instance or entity. The Internet was not capitalized as a marketing scheme. It was capitilized to differentiate it from the thousands of little internets all over the globe, many of which happen to be part of the Internet.
After reading this article I feel that it is necessary for me to correct my own style. Therefore effective now, anytime I reference wired it will be with a lowercase ‘w’. Don’t think of this as “some kind of symbolic demotion”, rather a relevance reality check.
(Thanks to Waxy.org: Links)
interNet … I love to be an anarchist!