u235

Imagine if everyone in the world spoke their very own language. It would be impossible to communicate with friends, neighbors, family. It would be impossible to work together as a society. Commonality of language gives us a bridge to pool the powers of more than one person, it gives us a means to structure society, support a rule of law, teach and share inventions, provide a medium for art. If you ask how many people do you need to have in a group to warrant your own language I would say it depends on the community. The larger and more powerful you want your group, the greater the need for a common language.

Where am I going with this?

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) recently released a warning that the future of the Internet relies on a common alphabet. The need for a common alphabet transcends the need for a common language. The idea that non-latin based cultures are being marginalized through a lack of representation is fucking ludicrous. For starters, they didn't invent the net. Yes, that seems like an infantile argument, but I claim it's a valid one. As with any invention, the person who gets there first gets to leave their mark and create the standards. Having Internet addresses in latin-only alphabets makes sense. Supporting non-latin addresses would be insane, you'd have to support every language, the net would fragment into districts, copyrights would be violated, phishing and impersonating would be out of control. Plus just the overall management of that quantity of data would be insane.

Fuck global diversity. There is no reason to break something that works because some back-water asshole thinks they're being insulted. If they like using the net then they need to adapt. When in Rome - ok? Personally if they don't like it, then they can create their own localized net, since no one else will be able to access their content anyway.

The bottom line is the Internet addressing scheme is in a Latin alphabet. It needs to stay that way. Write your web page in any language you want, that's fine, but if you want it accessible globally then you need to accept the rules of the organizations that make it possible. Don't blame the world for your isolation, we've figured out how to communicate, now it's time for you to do the same.