I read with great interest the three recent op-eds about the new
change in the World Wide Web allowing domain names to be written fully
in a non-Latin script. While all of these articles discuss in detail
the political and social implications of this allowance of non-Latin
characters, they do not touch at all on the technical dimensions of
this change. Given that the Internet and the World Wide Web are
fundamentally technical creations, I found this omission rather
mystifying. The fact that we could originally use only Latin
characters to describe domain names was based on fundamental technical
designs envisioned sometime ago, which were of course based largely on
the designers' own native languages and which ultimately had
far-reaching implications for the construction of the Internet and the
World Wide Web. It would have been nice for these articles to at least
allude to some of these technical dimensions and potential
complications in making this change.
Unpublished letter in response to:
Op-Ed Contributor - In the Arab world, the digital divide mirrors larger inequalities. - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16Antoon.html
Op-Ed Contributor - Search Engine of the Song Dynasty - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16xu.html
Op-Ed Contributor - Goddess English of Uttar Pradesh - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16joseph.html
