[Air-l] Origin of the term "Internet" ?

[Tama Leaver]

Hi All,

Regarding the capitalisation (or not), in 2004, Wired ran a column
declaring: It's Just the 'internet' Now
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/08/64596

I recall it provoked a lot of discussion at the time; I've not capitalised
internet for a while, but are others still Internetting?

- Tama


On 3/29/07, James Whyte <whyte.james at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> The capitaliztion is because it is treated as a proper noun - "a specific
> person, place or thing." Harbrace College Handbook
>
> Joseph Reagle <reagle at mit.edu> wrote:  On Wednesday 28 March 2007, Tamara
> Paradis wrote:
> > Been poking around trying to find what organization or individual coined
> the
> > term "Internet" and also trying to find out why the term is always
> > capitalized. I keep coming up with a lot of information on the origin
> > stories of the network and technology (i.e. ARPAnet) but nothing that
> > pinpoints the dawn of the umbrella term "Internet".
>
> Not sure if this is what you were after, but Vint Cerf is fond of talking
> about how the merging of ARPANET, PRNET, and SATNET were known as
> the "'inter-net' problem" [1]. However, I've not found much documentation
> of that.
>
> [1] http://legalminds.lp.findlaw.com/list/cyberia-l/msg27462.html
>
> What I have found is that the terms international, internet, and
> internetwork were used rather throughout the 1970s, they (Cerf) couldn't
> even settle on what to call it, or what ITP stood for:
>
> Vinton Cerf
> + ~ A partial specification of an International Transmission
> Protocol
> o y=1973
> o Specifies a International Transmission Protocol (ITP)
> implemented via TCP
> Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal, Carl Sunshine
> + ~ Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program
> o n=RFC 675, NIC 2 INWG 72 m=December y=1974
> Vinton Cerf
> + ~ IEN #5: Specification of Internet Transmission Control
> Program: TCP (Version 2)
> o m=March y=1977
> o Uses the term Internet, but otherwise speaks about
> Internetwork
> Vinton G. Cerf, Jonathan B. Postel
> + ~ Specification of Internetwork Transmission Control Program:
> TCP, Version 3
> o m=January y=1978
> o Version 3 simplifies TCP by breaking out IP into a separate
> spec, goes back to using Internetwork
>
> In version 3 (1978) because IP was split out of TCP, and was unambiguously
> referred to as Internet Protocol, I think that's when the term began to
> stick. However, there's more ambiguity on the details and versioning of
> these specs [2], so it's not as easy as that!
>
> [2]
> http://www.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/2006-October/000644.html
>
> My theory as to why Internet remains capitalized whereas the Web doesn't
> is:
> language usage evolves in odd ways, and Internet seems more like an
> acronym
> which perhaps innoculates it from change.
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-- 
Dr Tama Leaver
Associate Lecturer (Higher Education Development)
Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (M400)
University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway
Crawley WA 6009 Australia
Ph: (+61 8) 6488 1502
Fax: (+61 8) 6488 1156

www: http://www.catl.uwa.edu.au
www: http://www.tamaleaver.net
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