Who Speaks Web?

From e-Week.com:

Programming for the Web is, of course, an entirely different culture than programming for a single software platform, and Gundotra has taken to the new culture with all the zeal of a convert. "The previous platform I was responsible for evangelizing helped one company. The Web helps all of mankind," he said.

Gundotra demurred when asked if Microsoft just doesn't get Web development. He said some companies are native Web speakers, while others speak Web with a heavy accent.

Exec: Google is a 'Native Web Speaker'

So companies can be native Web speakers. Companies such as Google and Yahoo, but maybe not Microsoft or IBM. How about people? The commercial World Wide Web has been around for almost 15 years, hitting its first peak of popularity in the late 90's. The majority of people in even modestly technologically advanced countries have at least some exposure to it.  The question is who is a native speaker?

It may seem obvious that kids born since about 1985 have been exposed to the Internet all their lives. Does that mean they speak Web?

The folks from the universities who were on the Internet and the Unix geeks who were using ftp, telnet, gopher and the other text based Internet applications since 1969 would seem to speak Internet — after all the language of the Internet is Unix. Are they native speakers?

What about Marc Andreeson, a creator of Mosaic and founder of Netscape and his counterparts? Are they native speakers?

How about people like me? I've been using personal computers for over a quarter century and been on-line almost that long. Of course, back then 300 Baud was fast and CompuServe was "it"! But I was instrumental in one of the first companies to in NYC to host web sites running off of Oracle instead of static web pages — in 1994 — and was selling T1's and networking to early adopters through 1997. I spend most of every day on line, whether reading the morning news with breakfast, researching, blogging and communicating at work and checking the bio's of TV show and movie cast members on IMDB and Google in the evening. Does that make me a native speaker?

Oh, and what does my compulsion to link to definitions of network protocols say about my attitude?

How about my Father-in-Law? He's 92. We gave him a computer about 8 years ago. He has a dial-up account. He has shortcuts to the web sites he visits strewn across his desktop: he never figured out bookmarks (favorites in IE speak). Is he a native speaker?

How about you? What's your story? Who is a native speaker?