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If you read the actual memo (as opposed to the transcription below it), there's no "The". It's interesting that whoever did the transcription put in the defin
by madcaptenor 13y ago
If you read the actual memo (as opposed to the transcription below it), there's no "The". It's interesting that whoever did the transcription put in the definite article, because usage has changed in the last twenty years.
(The memo as a whole, it seems, goes back and forth between "the Internet" and just bare "Internet".)
- xhrpost 13y agoI actually came to the comments just to talk about this. Not the flip-flop in the article you're pointing out, but I've often wonder when the switch happened in general. Old articles and even TV[1] will use Internet without the definite article. Then, sometime in the mid-late 90's, we started placing 'The' out in front. My guess would be that techies originally did not use the definite article because other networks existed and had their own names. FidoNet, BITNET, etc. Thus 'Internet' was just a name to distinguish between other networks. Then, as the mainstream population started using Internet and saw that as the sole go-to network, it became 'The' Internet. [1] http://youtu.be/fxfhInhkvtM http://youtu.be/fxfhInhkvtM
- billiam 13y agoAs someone doing scientific computing back then, you nailed it. We distinguished Internet from the other networks already in use.