Tag Archives: domain names

1.2 – Top Level Domains and Culture

There has been a couple interesting ideas that I would like to share in this post regarding the internet as a place for cultures to find a voice and meet (even digitally). The first is a hopeful evolution of the top level domain name. Now, non-latin alphabets are supported as URL for various countries… check these links out:

On the flip side, there has been cultural exploitation via top level domains. Those are the suffixes each country uses (eg. Canada gets .ca). As the internet has grown, certain top level domains have become desirable… Tuvalu (.tv) was an early winner. Sadly, the Chagos Islanders (of whom there are very few and cannot live on their home islands due to being ousted by the British and US Military) have never see a cent from their country’s TL domain (.io). The money for registering this went to a holding company and is a sad bookend to their tumultuous history.