On the other hand, unicode domains may lead to balkanization of the net. How would you even type in something like борщ.рф (and before you ask, you can easily translate its contents using Google Translate after entering the URL)? And everyone, just everyone in Russia is already capable of typing in stuff in ASCII. So the upside is small and diminishing (more people learn English over time and that's a beautiful thing), and the downside is the reversal of the unification effect that Internet had. I'm pretty sure it's not an obvious choice.
I should also add that the general attitude of "not everybody speaks English so we should adapt our tech to reduce the need for English" seems to imply a privilege of already knowing English. It is true that not everyone speaks English at this moment, but the right solution would be to teach everyone English as it expands horizons immensely, not to balkanize the world. Languages are not equal and English is the single most useful one. One can argue that e.g. Russian is just as good as English, but it's just not true. The amount of information available in English is immeasurably higher than in any other national language, and one should have the privilege of knowing English for some time (or being a native speaker) to forget the fact.
> How would you even type in something like борщ.рф
by clicking on the link on my search engine. Though of course, either that page is in a language I can easily type (so why then use that URL?), or otherwise, I would not have searched for that term to begin with, whether I typed it in the URL bar or in the search field.
If I'm clicking a link on a page in a script I can read, then the point is moot too.
>(more people learn English over time and that's a beautiful thing
I don't know. Giving access to people who don't (yet) speak english to me is a nobler goal than forcing people to learn english and the latin script.
If they want to learn english, that's fine. But forcing them to is being exclusive.
Yes. There's a lot more content available in english and in the end, that's what made me learn it (honestly - the sole reason I started to learn english was to be able to play the talkie version of "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis"), but this was my decision. I wasn't forced to.
Yes, knowing English is great. Everyone should learn English.
But declaring English the lingua franca means that people from other cultures will be at a perennial disadvantage vis-a-vis native speakers, or that their native language would be neglected.
There's an obvious benefit we get from everyone speaking English, but there's also a non-obvious cost to the homogenisation of cultures. Already, there are languages dying (and dead), and with every languages dies a potentially different and meaningful way to look at the world.
In any case, I'd leave such decisions to those actually affected by them. People tend to react in surprising ways to other cultures telling them what they're worth or not (c. f. "Balkanisation")
I should also add that the general attitude of "not everybody speaks English so we should adapt our tech to reduce the need for English" seems to imply a privilege of already knowing English. It is true that not everyone speaks English at this moment, but the right solution would be to teach everyone English as it expands horizons immensely, not to balkanize the world. Languages are not equal and English is the single most useful one. One can argue that e.g. Russian is just as good as English, but it's just not true. The amount of information available in English is immeasurably higher than in any other national language, and one should have the privilege of knowing English for some time (or being a native speaker) to forget the fact.