Re: Faut-il une majuscule à Internet ?

[philippe.batailler@free.fr (Philippe Batailler)]

 Nicolas Boullis <nboullis@debian.org> écrivait :
  « Bonjour,
  « 
  « Suite à une relecture de Denis, je me suis demandé s'il fallait ou non 
  « mettre une majuscule à Internet. Comme il ne semblait pas très sûr non 
  « plus, je vous demande votre avis à tous, et je me plierai à la majorité.
  « 
En recherchant Internet versus internet sur google, on trouve cette page :

http://www.eh.net/lists/archives/hes/jun-2003/0055.php

HES: DISC -- Internet versus internet
posted by Barkley Rosser on June 23, 2003

NOTE: This thread originally began as part of a message in the QUERY: 
"laissez faire" or "laisser faire"?

Well, I should probably separate this slower thread out from the laisse... faire one.

It has been argued, not unreasonably, that the internet might be a metaphorical 
location, and thus not unreasonably capitalized like Paris or Poland. However, 
I would say that it is a lot more like the telephone, or the radio, or television. 
Someone is "on the telephone" or "on the radio" or on "television" whose locations, 
with the exception perhaps of the first one, are at least as nebulous and vague as 
the cyberspace of the internet (I refuse to go along with
this new convention). Needless to say, none of these is capitalized, although "TV" is.
So why should internet be?

My guess is that whoever started it or talked Microsoft into installing it in their 
spell check, it is an artifact of the dot.com bubble of the 1990s. The
internet was viewed as such a wonderful new and great thing, almost a god, that it 
had to be capitalized, at least in the US where it was seen as the cutting
edge of American economic and technological dominance in the world.

It is not out of the question that this capitalization was even pushed or encouraged 
by those seeking to extend the bubble. I am reminded that the city of New Orleans was 
founded as a result of John Law trying to justify the Mississippi Bubble of 1719. A 
law was passed at his behest to pick up vagrants and the unemployed off the streets 
and ship them off to the colony to make a real fundamental happen there. They were 
the first residents of what is now New Orleans.

Barkley Rosser

a+

-- 
Philippe Batailler