The Internet has become a global commons, providing a uniform platform for commerce, communications, debate and research for all nations. But, with the rapid rise in Asian Internet users, the Internet runs the risk of becoming balkanized, Nitin Desai, chair of the U.N.’s Internet Governance Forum (IGF), warns.
Speaking at a conference hosted by Nominet, the UK body in charge of domain names ending .uk, Desai pointed in particular to a problem that could lead Asian nations to break away from the current Internet structure and create their own, separate Internet: most Asians don’t know the Latin alphabet, the basis of all domain names.
He said the Chinese government was concerned that users still had to type webpage addresses using Latin characters even when the pages were in Chinese.
“A large proportion of the internet users in China do not know the Latin alphabet.
World Bank expert Howard Williams said that a two-tiered Internet, which lies at the heart of the net neutrality debate in the U.S., also threatens to fractionalize the Internet were it to emerge. David Harrington from the Communications Management Association said that cultural differences will inevitably split up the Internet — it’s only a matter of degrees of separation.
Cynthia Brumfield at 9:53 PM|Comments(0)
Blogs We Read
