On September 29, President Donald Trump directed the US government to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” instead of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in non statutory government material.
A government decided what it wanted one of the world’s most important technologies to be called.
And the new abbreviation was already a domain extension.
.si is Slovenia’s country code domain.
After Trump introduced the term, .si registrations surged.
Then there is the coincidence.
Melania Trump was born in Slovenia.
There is no evidence the two things are connected. But the irony is hard to miss.
A US president changes the language from AI to SI, and those same two letters happen to be the country code domain of the First Lady’s birthplace.
⚪️ The extension did not change.
⚪️ Its meaning did.
⚪️That is what naming can do.
Governments can choose terminology. Registries can set rules. Companies can decide what their platforms call things.
But the people using those names still need to decide what works for them.
Australia has already shown how quickly the rules around a name can change.
I wrote about this recently in “When the Rules Change on Your Name”.
A .com.au name can be registered legitimately under one set of rules, only for those rules to change later.
That is the point.
You may hold the name, but you do not control the rules governing the namespace.
Handshake approaches ownership differently.
A Handshake root name is held directly by its owner on the blockchain.
That does not make conventional domains useless, but it does highlight the difference between being allowed to use a name and actually owning the name itself.
.si may suit someone who wants to associate with “Super Intelligence.”
.ai may suit someone else.
A .com.au may be exactly what an Australian business wants.
A Handshake name is another option again.
The point is not that everyone should choose the same system.
The point is understanding who controls the name, and who controls the rules around it.
Names do more than identify things.
⚪️ They frame them.
⚪️ Governments know that.
⚪️ Companies know that.
⚪️ Registries know that.
🎯 The people using those names should know it too.
Own The Name. Own The Rules. Own The Dot.