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When did “the Internet” become “the internet?”

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Re: When did “the Internet” become “the internet?”

#21

Post by guenthert »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #11
pram wrote: post #7

There used to be things that weren’t the “Internet” that required acknowledgement of the difference with a noun, maybe. Like AOL and Prodigy were online but they weren’t the Internet. You could get to the Internet from them, but it was a distinct experience.

Maybe they were part of the Internet but not the Web?

Nah, that was years before the WWW (as we used to call it). Those were walled garden networks (CompuServe was another one), which eventually offered connectivity to the Internet too (and not long thereafter either ceased to exist or converted to Internet service provider and/or web services).

Re: When did “the Internet” become “the internet?”

#22

Post by dredmorbius »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #11
pram wrote: post #7

There used to be things that weren’t the “Internet” that required acknowledgement of the difference with a noun, maybe. Like AOL and Prodigy were online but they weren’t the Internet. You could get to the Internet from them, but it was a distinct experience.

Maybe they were part of the Internet but not the Web?

No.

AOL was its own independent proprietary network, closer to a very large BBS, with email, chat, and content standards. It bridged to the Internet, as many networks at the time did (and many others did not).

The World Wide Web is a specific set of protocols (mostly: HTML and HTTPS, most would now include CSS and JS a well as other stsndards), which can run across the Internet or other networks, e.g., a disconected LAN.

AOL's joining the Internet had the largest immediate impact on Usenet, another protocol facility which can oerate over the Internet, but also transacted over phone lines (via UUCP) and avian carriers --- 747s carrying tapes between the US and Australia.

John Waterman's The Matrix (1990) is an excellent overview of early networking systems. That edition (there were several revisions) predates even the Web.

Re: When did “the Internet” become “the internet?”

#23

Post by SulphurCrested »

fmajid wrote: post #9

As far as I am concerned, it’s a place and capitalized, except if it’s used as an adjective.

Why, then, does it have a definite article? One does not catch a flight to "the New York".

(Some place names in English do have "the", but then it is capitalised, for example "The Pines" or "The Hague".)

Re: When did “the Internet” become “the internet?”

#24

Post by philwelch »

monocasa wrote: post #6

One if the best arguments I've heard in favor of this is that it feels like we're on the cusp of interplanetary civilization. Protocols built on IP (particularly TCP/IP) break down hard with half hour packet latencies. Most of the work I've seen to attack this problem goes about it (in part) by conceptualizing each planet as having its own internet, with synchronization between the two internet's being handled by new…

I’d be fascinated to see some of these sources. I’ve been curious for awhile what online connectivity is going to look like across the solar system.

Re: When did “the Internet” become “the internet?”

#25

Post by gumby »

guenthert wrote: post #20
gumby wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is of course part of The Internet, and is a testbed for new internet protocols. And obscure enough that you already knew that :-)

You give me too much credit there. I only heard of the Internet2 (looong time ago and I understood it as a response of academia to the Eternal September). From the Wikipedia article and cursory reading of the information provided at https://internet2.edu/network it isn't entirely clear to me, whether the Internet2 network infrastructure (provided now by Level3 if I got that right) is indeed part of The Internet. Iiuc…

If you read the original papers: it doesn’t have to use IP to be part of the Internet, just be connected.

Re: When did “the Internet” become “the internet?”

#26

Post by walrus01 »

monocasa wrote: post #6

One if the best arguments I've heard in favor of this is that it feels like we're on the cusp of interplanetary civilization. Protocols built on IP (particularly TCP/IP) break down hard with half hour packet latencies. Most of the work I've seen to attack this problem goes about it (in part) by conceptualizing each planet as having its own internet, with synchronization between the two internet's being handled by new…

the interplanetary internet working group is a real thing: http://ipnsig.org/

Re: When did “the Internet” become “the internet?”

#28

Post by smoll »

Perhaps this is too simple of an explanation to be true, but maybe the lack of capitalization comes from people on the internet typing internet without capitalization, and then the “important publications” all followed suit eventually. Sort of like how no one really uses “LOL” instead of “lol” even though it’s an acronym and of course acronyms are supposed to be capitalized.

Re: When did “the Internet” become “the internet?”

#29

Post by DanBC »

smoll wrote: post #28

Perhaps this is too simple of an explanation to be true, but maybe the lack of capitalization comes from people on the internet typing internet without capitalization, and then the “important publications” all followed suit eventually. Sort of like how no one really uses “LOL” instead of “lol” even though it’s an acronym and of course acronyms are supposed to be capitalized.

> acronyms are supposed to be capitalized.

Style guides have different rules. Here's BBC saying they don't capitalise all acronyms: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/collegeofjournalism/entries/8f7c...

And there are words like laser or Benelux that tend not to be capitalised even if the style guide recommends it.

Re: When did “the Internet” become “the internet?”

#30

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

dredmorbius wrote: post #22
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they were part of the Internet but not the Web?

No. AOL was its own independent proprietary network, closer to a very large BBS, with email, chat, and content standards. It bridged to the Internet, as many networks at the time did (and many others did not). The World Wide Web is a specific set of protocols (mostly: HTML and HTTPS, most would now include CSS and JS a well as other stsndards), which can run across the Internet or other networks , e.g., a disconected…

Oh, I might be misremembering because I was very small but I could have sworn I used AOL as an ISP and used web browsers (maybe Netscape Navigator?) to browse the web on AOL (maybe version 5 or 6?) in addition to their own weird portal thing which in my very vague memory was a lot like what you are describing.

Is my memory completely false here? It's very possible I'm conflating things from earlier in the 90s with things later in the 90s.

I can't seem to find the book (?) that you're suggesting in a search.

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