Allright let me catch you up on the current controversy (if you don’t already know). Earlier today BoingBoing contributer, Cory Doctorow decided to bring the house down on the term WiFi. Understanding the origin of the term “WiFi”, he posted a letter from a founding member of the Wi-Fi Alliance in which he claims the origin of the term comes from a lame marketing plan to make the technology sound more appealing than the IEEE reference name 802.11. So, they hire a marketing firm to create a hip new name and guess what they came up with? WiTech? …no. Wireless Transmission Protocol? …no again. Apparently, they came up with a term that has a cool sound but means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! WiFi. Wow, great plan guys. Now you’re upset that the rest of the world is confused? Anyway, to make things worse, the organization that orginally sought out this cool new name decided they didn’t like it either so they made up a meaning to it - “Wireless Fidelity”.

To add to the mix, recently the dictionary people got involved:

the term “Wi-Fi” has officially made it into the dictionary. If you need a definition, here you go:

abbreviation - Wireless Fidelity, a group of technical standards enabling the transmission of data over wireless networks.
verb - convert or adapt for Wireless Fidelity compatibility : what type of electronics will be immune from being Wi-Fied?”

So now there’s a world of people understandably calling it wireless fidelity when the founder of the Wi-Fi Alliance (and the technological 1337 [ you know who you are…..]) are screaming to the contrary.

But in this crazy world, who knows whats right and whats wrong anymore. I think this post from ‘conedude13′ on the Digg comment section sums it all up quite nicely.

“Why call it Wi-Fi when it doesn’t mean anything? Why park in your driveway and drive on a parkway? Why eat applejax when it doesn’t taste like apples? Why ask Why? Try Bud Dry? There are a million and one questions out there that have words in them that have absolutly no bearing on whatever product they are on. But, I do know this for sure, that if you keep poking and proding the subject you will soon realize that you are unwraveling the fabric of time and space. So tread carefully my friends, tread carefully.”

BoingBoing - Wifi isn’t short for “Wireless Fidelity”