What is Digital Language Diversity and why should we care?

The relationship between language and the Internet is a growing area of policy interest and academic study, see for instance (MAAYA 2012), (Paolillo et al. 2005), (Pimienta 2001), (Kornai 2013), (Pimienta et al. 2009), (Rehm and Uszkoreit 2012). The emerging picture is one where language profoundly affects a person's experience of the Internet. It determines how much - if any - information you can access on Wikipedia. It orients a person's choices and decisions by shaping the results of a search engine, depending on the language used. It determines the range of services that can be available over the Internet, and therefore the amount of everyday tasks (such as buying a ticket, reviewing opinions about hotel and restaurants, purchasing books or other goods, etc.) that can be carried out virtually. Far from infinite, the Internet, it seems, is only as big as one's language. Should this hold true, it would be at odds with the original spirit of the Internet, which - according to the words of Tim Berners-Lee - would be a place "to cross barriers and connect cultures". But it is safe to argue that the extent to which a language can be used over the Internet not only affects a person's experience and choice of opportunities; it also affect the language itself. If a language is poorly or not supported to be used over digital devices, for instance if the keyboard of the PC is not equipped with the characters and diacritics necessary to write in the language, or if there is no spell checker for a language, then its usability becomes severely affected, and it might will never be used online. The language could become "digitally endangered", and its value and profile could be lessened, especially in the eyes of the new generations. These considerations call for closer examination of a number of related issues. First, the "digital language diversity", i.e. the linguistic diversity of the Internet. Second, it is important to reflect on the conditions that make it possible for a language to be used over digital devices, and about what can be done in order to grant this possibility to languages other than so-called "major" ones.