Korea and the Internet :: Computers Language Communication Papers

Korea and the cyberspaceSince its birth a generation ago, the meshwork has been dominated by the English language and labor union American culture. In a 1998 survey conducted by the Internet look group, eMarketer, two-thirds (68 percent) of a little over 60 one one million million million million Internet users ecumenical reside in just two countries, the United States, with 37 million users, and Canada, which has just over 4 million. Ab step forward 60 percent of the Internet host computing machines are located in the United States. Nine out of 10 Internet users today are English-speaking. No fewer than 82 percent of home pages (web sites) are in English, according to the Internet guilds survey of 60,000 computers with Internet addresses. Yet some foresee an mop up to this electronic hegemony. The number of non-U.S. Internet users is about to outnumber those inside the sylvan soon and increase by nine-fold over the next five years, from 16.4 million in 1997 to 143 million by the year 2002, representing an annual growth charge per unit of 70 percent. In that case, the present practice of conducting business, presenting news and information, and performing word of honor on the Internet will have to be drastically changed. The widespread use of English will eventually be contested and the Internet itself will become multicultural. This is already happening. A consortium of American computer companies has developed a universal digital code known as Unicode to allow computers to represent the letters and characters of virtually all the worlds languages. Major search engines same Yahoo and Excite offer their go in multiple languages. Netscape Communications in partnership with the leading Latin American Internet service, Star Media Network, provides a free Internet go by in Spanish and Portuguese. Internet services in languages other than English, like Star Media, are starting to provide world and regional news, weather, expect listings, e-mail, ch at rooms, Internet access and more, all in the users native language. tending(p) such developments, optimists argue that far from ending diversity, the Internet will bear on it by allowing even small groups of people to disseminate their messages worldwide. By passage the middle range languages, it may actually protect minority languages be with extinction. A wider range of languages on the Internet means at to the lowest degree in theory that a wider range of ideas will be transfer in a cyberspace, the long-promised global village. Despite a tremendous inflow of non-English languages in recent years, however, the Internet has a long way to go before it becomes a truly multilingual medium.