Connection is good (and we can live with the death of little languages)
Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 11:02PM ARTICLE: Russians Wary of Cyrillic Web Domains, By CLIFFORD J. LEVY, New York Times, December 21, 2009
Go slow on the whole Balkanization theory of web growth:
Cut off for decades under Communism, Russians revel in the Internet's ability to connect them to the world, and they prize the freedom of the Web even as the government has tightened control over major television channels.
But now, computer users are worried that Cyrillic domains will give rise to a hermetic Russian Web, a sort of cyberghetto, and that the push for Cyrillic amounts to a plot by the security services to restrict access to the Internet. Russian companies are also resisting Cyrillic Web addresses, complaining about costs and threats to online security.
"This is one more step toward isolation," said Aleksei Larin, 31, a construction engineer in Tula, 115 miles south of Moscow. "And since this is a Kremlin project, it is possible that it will lead to the introduction of censorship, which is something that certain officials have long sought."
Besides startling Russian officials, the reaction has offered insights into the evolution of the Internet as it has spread from the West to the rest of the world. People in places like Russia have created a hybrid Web, typing domain and e-mail addresses in Latin letters and the content in native ones. However loyal they may be to the language of Dostoyevsky, many here do not want to embrace another system.
Many will decry the death of lesser languages, but not I.
(Thanks: vacationlanegrp)
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