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T
HE ORIGIN OF
the Internet was the Advanced Research
Projects Agency Network (ARPANet). It was developed in
1969 and used mainly by experts to exchange information
between remote computers for academic and military purposes.
Throughout the 1970s, Internet use gradually increased with the
introduction of the IP address system. However, difficulties in
using this system continued to impose limits on the use of the
Internet.
Since the 1980s, there has been explosive growth in Internet
use after the United States Department of Commerce (US DoC)
organized and distributed domain names that people would feel
more comfortable with than IP addresses. This resulted in the
growth of Internet-related industries and the birth of the new
economy, and the evolution of the US into a high-tech based
economy.
The growth of the Internet has dramatically changed many
things. Because the Internet has become so popular and wide-
spread, people are affected by it regardless of their age, culture or
language. With the Internet turning into a whole new land to
pioneer, individual countries are working hard to expand their
territory and to maintain an influence in the form of their own
domain address system. Without this evolution of user-friendly
Internet addresses from the original IP address system, the era of
the dotcom industry would not have arrived.
In the long-run, however, domain names have been the cause
of both hopes and despair. The growth of domain names ending
in .com has been limited to one language, English. In contrast
with the past, people today gain a great deal of information from
the Internet. Therefore, countries or people that are not familiar
with English are bound to fall behind in an era of information
technology.
Consequently, English-speaking countries have been able to
continue to accumulate wealth through a rapid growth of
Internet-related industries by using the Internet as a common
service among the public. Meanwhile, social and economic devel-
opment has been relatively slow in non English-speaking
countries, which account for more of the world’s land and popu-
lation than English-speaking countries.
Many areas of the world are only beginning to gain access to the
Internet, and the Native Language Internet Address (NLIA ) will
help users in these areas to learn how to access important infor-
mation using their own language. Using the NLIA will also help
them to establish skills and pride in their own culture and
language, because they will not be forced to use English in order
to use the Internet. Netpia predicts that the NLIA solution will
help millions of non-English speaking Internet users around the
world to navigate the web through easier and more intuitive
access to the Internet.
The Native Language Internet Address
Netpia.comdeveloped the NLIA in 1997. It has enabled non-
English speakers and those who are not very familiar with English
to access information freely using the Internet, a task that previ-
ously proved difficult for them. For example, with the
commercialization and popularity of the Native Language
(Korean) Internet Address service in 1999, Korea’s ranking in the
International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) Digital Access
Index jumped from 24th in 1998 to 4th in 2002, signifying Korea
as the first country to experience an increase in growth rate. The
secret weapon in Korea’s significant development as a represen-
tative of non-English speaking countries, with its unique alphabet
systems, lies in the NLIA system.
Unlike English-language domain names, NLIA is an Internet
address which does not sideline anybody in any way. Regardless
of the country or ethnic group they belong to, anyone who can
read and write their native language can have easy access to the
wealth of information on the Internet. Instead of using compli-
cated strings of Roman English letters with prefixes and suffixes,
users can type meaningful and intuitive words in their own
language directly in the address bar to reach web sites. This is
not another search engine, but a one-to-one address mapping
system. And because it is a server-based solution, it provides ubiq-
uitous coverage no matter which operation system, browser, or
device is being used to access the Internet. People using older
computers and those using the newest wireless devices will
benefit from the same solution. In this regard, NLIA provides a
‘knowledge gateway’ to the Internet for everyone.
Under the English-language domain names system, users can
encounter difficulties in guessing the names of web sites and their
top-level domains (TLDs). Therefore, people tend to run search
engines in their native languages and select one of the web sites
among the list of results. Occasionally, people even end up visiting
several websites before reaching the one they were looking for. An
increasing number of Internet users have experienced this type of
inconvenience as the existing domains have become saturated.
NLIA is a keyword-type Internet address presented in natural
language. It is a third-generation technology that provides Internet
users with an environment where they are free from hard-to-
remember English domain name containing ‘www’ and full-points,
and can use their own language to access information . Moreover,
Transforming the digital divide into
the digital opportunity:
Native Language Internet Address
Netpia, Korea