Web Addresses

In this episode, Web Addresses . . .

Have you ever wondered why internet web addresses are in English?

While poking around on the web, we discovered a riveting segment (if you're a Geek) from howstuffwork.com to tickle your RAM (Random Access Memory).

Ok - "Why are internet web addresses in English?"

The short answer: Web addresses are in English because the people who developed the standards for web addresses were, for the most part, English-speaking Americans.

Are you ready for a longer answer?

In the early days of the internet, the only way to connect to a remote computer was to know its unique Internet Protocol or IP address, a long string of unique digits such as 165.254.202.218. But in 1983, as the number of computers on the network continued to grow, the University of Wisconsin developed the Domain Name System (DNS), which maps numeric IP addresses to more easily remembered domain names like google.com.

In 1990, according to the Computer History Museum, British scientist (and English speaker) Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. By 1992, more than one million computers were connected, the majority in the United States.

In 1994, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a standards organization made up of representatives from several U.S. government agencies, published a set of standards for web addresses, called Uniform Resource Locators or URLs.

This made web addresses easy to read, write, type, and remember; the engineering task force restricted URLs to a small number of characters, namely the uppercase and lowercase letters of the English (or Latin) alphabet, the digits 0 through 9, and a few symbols.

The allowable characters are based on the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, better known as the ASCII character set, developed in the United States and first published in 1963.

This all worked fine for English-speaking countries, but as of 2009, more than half of the 1.6 billion internet users worldwide spoke a language with a character set other than the English (or Latin) alphabet.

To understand what using the web is like for those individuals, imagine that you have to navigate the web using only Arabic. The content of your favorite sites is still in English, but the web address for every site you use is made up of entirely unfamiliar characters that may not even be found on your keyboard.

That scenario, in reverse, is essentially what the Internet experience has been like for web users who read and write using not only another language but an entirely different alphabet or set of characters. (Visit a website like Egypt's el-balad.com, for example, and the distinction between the site content, which is entirely in Arabic, and the web address, which uses only English characters, becomes immediately apparent.)

Given the growing number of non-English users online, it may come as no surprise that English web addresses are no longer the law of the land.

In 2009, ICANN, the U.S.-based nonprofit organization that regulates domain names on the internet, approved the use of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), meaning that web addresses would be able to contain non-English characters like Chinese, Korean, Arabic, or Cyrillic script.

There you have it, are you wonderstruck? Probably not, but now you know why internet web addresses for a long time were only in English.

If you enjoy our weekly visits, please share them with a friend.

I'm Patrick Ball; thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.

Comments

History Isn’t a Museum

✨ In this episode, History Isn't a Museum—It's a River . . . History isn't a museum—it's a river, and like it or not, we're already swimming in it. Its waters carry timeless lessons forward, flowing through each generation, waiting to be rediscovered . This profound realization struck me while reading Marcus Aurelius's Meditations . Imagine: a Roman emperor and philosopher two thousand years ago, writing notes that sound like advice from a modern mindfulness coach. When he says, "You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength," it feels like he's speaking directly to us. The water may change, but the river is the same. Examining this writing with a fresh, childlike perspective and a wealth of experience, I realize how consistent human nature remains over time. Every generation faces familiar challenges, marked by frustration, peace, courage, faith, baseball, and the search for meaning across the ages...

Lessons from 1872

In this episode, Lessons from 1872: Travel in the Age of No-WiFi . . . Imagine having 80 days to explore the world, with no smartphones, no jet planes, and no money concerns. A thrilling thought, right? That’s the fantasy Jules Verne implies in his classic adventure, Around the World in 80 Days , and it's a question I've been pondering from my easy chair in Vista, California. This week’s On the Fly , we're traveling back in time with one of the most thrilling literary adventures ever written. Early on, it’s clear this is Phileas Fogg’s story—a man of clocks and calculations, whose every move is measured. His journey isn’t about discovery, but a bet—a mathematical challenge involving money, schedules, and perfect timing. But when you think he’s the engine of the story, someone else quietly steals the show. Meet Passepartout: The Heart of the Journey. Jean Passepartout, Fogg’s new valet, is Fogg’s complete opposite. A former circus acrobat seeking a quiet life, he joins Fo...

The Silent Grid–Part Two

In this episode, The Silent Grid – Part Two Sirens split the night as Greenwood went dark. Marvin knew instantly—the blackout wasn’t an accident. It was a warning. In this quiet town, where life once unfolded at a predictable pace, a sleek, intuitive smartphone—a so-called gift from the future —has arrived. But it’s no tool for connection. It’s a silent force, erasing individuality and turning neighbors into something less than human. Marvin Gellborn, a man who values independence, sees the truth. His device isn’t helping; it’s testing him, watching him, and quietly embedding itself into the life of Greenwood. Welcome back to On the Fly . In this week’s episode of The Silent Grid , GridBot tightens its grip. After a hopeful community gathering, Marvin and his robot companion, Norman, notice a troubling absence—the very generation they hoped to reach has vanished into the neon glow of The Signal Box , a youth tech hub pulsing with digital obsession. When Greenwood’s lights vanish, Marvi...

Shadows in the Grid

In this episode, Chapter Nine – Shadows in the Grid (Previous episode) – The Disconnected Generation . The first flicker came just after midnight. Marvin sat at his kitchen table, scribbling notes about the park gathering, when the overhead light shivered, dimmed, and went out. The hum of the refrigerator ceased, leaving a silence so complete it seemed to press against his skin. Norman, standing near the door like a watchman, tilted his head. A faint glow pulsed from his chest cavity, the hydrogen core humming steady, almost reassuring. “Localized outage,” Norman said, calm to the point of detachment. “GridBot will stabilize in sixty seconds.” But sixty seconds passed. Then another. The street outside remained cloaked in darkness. No backup generators started. No emergency lights blinked alive. Greenwood lay as still as a painting. Marvin pushed back his chair, his heartbeat quickening. “This isn’t just an outage, Norman. Something’s wrong.” Norman’s optic sensors brightened, their pal...

On The Fly

Search This Blog