The Internet or the internet?
There is another ITU than my ITU. My ITU is the IT University of Copenhagen (www.itu.dk), the other ITU is the International Telecommunication Union (www.itu.int). Some of their latest findings show that in fact every 10th person on the earth (some 650 mill. people) in principle have access to the internet - however not all these people have the financial means or the knowledge required to actually go online. See the
ITU World Telecommunication Development Report 2003 - and the numbers on internet access in an earlier press release. (I came by these numbers in a Politiken article).

To me numbers like these prove, that I'm right in telling my students that they should start writing the internet and not the Internet in their essays. They have previously been told to write it with a capital "I", and when I tell them I think they should write it with a small letter "i", they normally argue, that "it is an unique and special noun" (and so should be written by capital letters according to Danish grammar rules)! I usually retort, that so is tv and radio and we spell these media with small letters, not capital letters without ever thinking about it. The internet is becoming a media form which is a part of our daily life, much in the same way everyday household media like radio and tv are, at least here in Scandinavia. "The internet" is not an unique or outstanding thing (noun) anymore. I think the way we (my students and I) talk and think about the internet should reflect this.
(Steve Jones has also written about this, but I cant remember exactly when or where)
# posted by Lisbeth at: 15:34