While grading papers this weekend I found myself constantly capitalizing lowercase spellings of the word "internet" into "the Internet". Starting to get tired of doing this it dawned on me that perhaps I had it all wrong. As it turns out, I'm clearly late to the discussion as there is significant chatter about the matter. While typically the word has been capitalized to distinguish the Internet from "an internet" (any interconnected network, intranet, etc), there is a growing trend (notably Wired Magazine) to use the lowercase form. So with that, I leave it to my students to do some research and come to their own decision about the matter.

Here are a few links from around the web regarding our discussion last class in Communication and the Future about why so few US citizens have passports. Reasons for this are clearly complex and hard to analyze.

There are no clear stats as to how many passports are currently in circulation, but the government does release numbers as to how many are issued each year. This site has some interesting estimates and discussion. Some things are for sure: technologies and policies and privacy are changing.

http://www.zefrank.com/sandwich/

ze franks says:

The viewers at zefrank.com/theshow are attempting to create the first Earth sandwich in history: when two pieces of bread are simultaneously placed on opposite sides of the globe.

Watch the video here.

http://www.zefrank.com/sandwich/

ze franks says:

The viewers at zefrank.com/theshow are attempting to create the first Earth sandwich in history: when two pieces of bread are simultaneously placed on opposite sides of the globe.

Watch the video here.