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

Finding Our Place

In this episode, Finding Our Place: Hope and Humanity in the Age of AI . . . Yesterday, I overheard a conversation that echoed a question many of us are quietly asking: In a world increasingly shaped by algorithms, where do we , as humans, truly fit in? My younger colleagues, sharp and driven, were "joking" about AI taking their jobs. Their concerns felt valid, prompting me to reflect. Will machines really replace us? My answer, unequivocally, is No . And here’s why. What makes us uniquely human isn't merely our ability to perform tasks. It's our innate capacity for creativity and our deep-seated need to serve others. These aren't just abstract ideas; they are the very essence of what gives meaning to our lives and work. While AI excels at processing data and automating tasks with incredible speed, it cannot replicate the spark of human ingenuity. It lacks the empathy to truly understand unspoken needs or the intuitive synergy that fosters breakthrough solutio...

Chasing the Magic

In this episode, Chasing the Magic: How the Summer of ’98 Inspired the 'Ball Boys' . . . Do you remember that feeling? The late-summer air was thick with humidity, radios crackling on porches, the smell of fresh-cut grass and barbecue smoke in the backyard. Every evening carried a new kind of suspense—the country holding its collective breath after every pitch. “Did he hit one today?” became more than a question; it sparked a nationwide conversation. For me, and millions of others, the summer of 1998 wasn’t just another baseball season. It was theater, a movement, a time when the game recaptured something sacred. As sportswriter Mike Lupica said so perfectly, “No matter how old you are or how much you’ve seen, sports is still about memory and imagination. Never more than during the summer of ’98, when baseball made everyone feel like a kid again, when it felt important again.” Just four years earlier, the 1994 players’ strike had left the sport bruised...

The Curious Crew

In today's special episode, The Curious Crew . . . Oh, our young folks are ready, with AI so grand, A new era of wonders across every land! With curious minds, vast as Space, full of creative delight, And a zest for exploring, with all of their light! They welcome new tools, with a gleam in their eye, To learn and to grow, way up to the sky! Our thinking's a marvel, a clever design, We make new plans, so fantastically fine! With problem-space maps and memories, too, We build new ideas, quite fresh and quite new! With smiling faces, showing gratitude's grace, We find our own wonderful, human-filled place! Sharing a meal with generosity and love, A warm human spirit, a gift from above! We stand tall together, collaborate, and help with a grin, For with Agentic AI, together we win! Not machines all alone, but with us by their side, We'll create and serve, with nothing to hide! I'm Patrick Ball. Stay curious and ask questions. See you next time.

The Sights of Summer

In this episode, The Sights of Summer: Chasing Miles & Unexpected Smiles . . . For Lori and me, the perfect summer morning isn't something you find marked on a calendar; it's a feeling . It's the refreshing crispness of the air on our faces, the gentle warmth of the sun on our skin, and the exciting anticipation of discovering new miles and uncovering the hidden "sights of summer" along our journey. A glorious California day returns with our weekly ride. We begin with a warm-up cruise around our neighborhood under a wide, cloudless, azure sky. With a smile, I’m thinking, " You know it’s going to be a great ride when even furry co-pilots are excited!" We chuckled as a neighbor drove past, two white, fluffy dogs with their tongues flapping in the breeze and ears flopping wildly out the truck window. Pure canine bliss—an ideal sign for a fun day on two wheels. “Did you see those pups? They looked like they were smiling.” Traffic was blissfully light, ...

On The Fly

Search This Blog