It annoys me that the world has determined the Internet important enough to capitalize its name. For many years I stubbornly refused to acknowledge my computer spellchecker’s recommendation to change the word from internet with a lowercase “i” to Internet with an uppercase “I.”
I waged a personal battle, refusing to recognize the importance of the massive system of interconnected computers and modems and servers and fiber optics, refusing to hit the shift key to capitalize the “I.”
But eventually, society wore me down. Even dictionaries now recommend capitalizing the “I” in Internet. Since the final word in our office—Webster’s New World College Dictionary, fourth edition—is among the dictionaries that have succumbed to the importance of the Internet, I now capitalize the word. But it irritates me each time I must do so.
I’m not the only person who gamely tried to reduce the importance of the Internet. It appears that there are many others who believe as I do that the service should be generic— like electricity or sewer and water. So I am frequently—albeit reluctantly— correcting the word in the writing of others. Not “i” but “I.”
I also reluctantly admit that the Internet—capital “I”—is a wonderful tool. It was brought home to me this week as I was doing some writing in the car. My husband Chuck is an excellent driver, so I am comfortable typing away in the passenger seat. Or, should I say keyboarding? Another style change—students no longer take typing classes, they take keyboarding and mouse classes.
But call it typing or keyboarding, I get a lot done on my laptop. There is only one problem. I don’t have access to the Internet. I don’t have a “smart phone” that lets me search the web or a 3G or 4G card that magically captures the Internet from the air while driving down the road.
The Internet has replaced what newspapers once relied upon, the research department. Major newspapers had full staffs of folks, ready to sift through archives, encyclopedias, and local libraries to find background information for news stories or editorials. For smaller newspapers, like the News-Herald, writers were their own research department. But information was available, through collections of reference books or via a phone call to a colleague.
Nowadays, the research department has been replaced by the Internet. A world of information is available at our fingertips. There is always concern about the validity of the information, of course. Along with useful data, an Internet search offers a bounty of bogus references. I don’t trust the first website I visit and I try to crosscheck information on a couple of different sites. Historical society websites or sites maintained by universities are usually trustworthy.
But research department or Internet, I had neither last week while traveling and it was frustrating. I was writing a column about the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance and I wanted to know what television station recently made a pledge-editing faux paux. A Google search would have given me an immediate answer.
I also wanted to know what year the words “under God” were added to the pledge. I knew they were not part of the original pledge, but didn’t know when Congress passed the legislation adding that language. Another Google—or Bing or Yahoo—search would have quickly yielded the information I needed. A search would have let me know that the pledge was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892 and was adopted by Congress in 1942. In 1954, it was amended to include “under God.”
Riding down the highway, I didn’t have access to that information. So I used another bit of technology that we have become all-too-accustomed to— my cell phone. I called my mother— and asked her to conduct a Google search to find it for me. She did, and called back a few minutes later with the information I needed. It was nice to have my own research department for the day.
I did not however, have access to the Internet to find a quote for the end of Unorganized Territory. Regular readers know that I end my column with a quote. I have done so for 12 years, trying to match appropriate words of wisdom to the column topic. I use a variety of sources—books of classic quotations such as Braddock’s Presidential Quotations or The Impossible Takes Longer: The 1,000 Wisest Things Ever Said by Nobel Prize Laureates—or of course, the Internet. The Internet is a wonderful resource for quotation searches. There is quotelady.com, thinkexist.com, quoteland.com and many more.
Inevitably an interesting quote leads to further exploration. I end up doing Internet research to learn more about the interesting character who so ably encapsulated the thought I wanted to convey in a simple quote. So I know that I’ll eventually end up getting a smart phone with Internet capability, which will meet my onthe road reference needs.
But it makes me a bit sad. I’ve always liked using encyclopedias and other texts to find the information I needed. It is especially poignant for larger newspapers that used to have a complement of researchers standing by—like my mom was for me—to help with such tasks.
An occupation now made obsolete by computers. By the Internet with a capital “I.”
Information on the Internet is subject to the same rules and regulations as conversation at a bar.
George Lundberg
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