One of my friends had this hypothesis that capital letters in the English language should be done away with as they serve no particular purpose and unnecessarily add to the cost of computing by requiring a longer ASCII code and complicating the pseudo code a programs that carry out spell-checks.
My first reaction was not far from the incredulous amazement that would have been felt by the first person who had first had it from Copernicus that the Earth goes round the Sun and not vice versa. But I took heart from the fact that I had survived similar path-breaking ideas being dropped onto me in the past. (This is a side-effect of writing a blog immediately after reading a Wodehouse!)
I think the presence of capital letters adds immense value in terms of conveying emotions/information in the written form. Especially in a text-intensive online world, capital letters can be used to vent intense emotion. Like The Rock saying “IT DOESN’T MATTER…”
Capitalization of the words that refer to God have been traditionally used to convey a sort of respect or reverence to the subject. Moreover, capitalization helps to distingusing proper nouns from other words in the English language that go by the same spelling. Add to it the convention of writing abbreviated forms such as the US (which could be easily confused with “us” without capitalization, especially given that tiny little articles like “a/an” and “the” are not deemed worthy of attention these days). In fact, the German language has a convention of capitalizing the first letter of every noun, though that, to me, is overdoing it!
Capital letters are also a welcome break from the montonicity of written text (though this, I agree, is more a matter of habit). For example, how difficult it is to read when every new sentence does not begin with a capital letter. This is because one seldom reads character by character (unlike a computer) but rather takes in multiple words at each glance.
Thus, in my opinion, the idea of doing away with capitalization in English, though quite revolutionary, would make English more efficient for the computers but pretty disinteresting for the humans!
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Quelle est la difference? 
1. One should be encouraged to improve his/her command over English to convey emotions. Very few literary works make use of capital letters to convey emotions.
2. Consider the following sentence “Needles killed a pack of wolves”. Is needles a proper noun or plural of needle?
3. Rules regarding capital/small letters is routinely flouted in popular culture. Consider your own example. How is one supposed to identify nouns/proper nouns in that example?
4. Problem related to abbreviations can be solved by adding a full stop after each letter.
5. You have answered your own question on aesthetics of the script.
1. One should be encouraged to improve his/her command over English language to convey emotions. Very few literary works make use of capital letters to convey emotions.
2. Consider the following sentence “Needles killed a pack of wolves”. Is needles a proper noun or plural of needle?
3. Rules regarding capital/small letters are routinely flouted in popular culture. Consider your own example. How is one supposed to identify nouns/proper nouns in that example?
4. Problem related to abbreviations can be solved by adding a full stop after each letter.
5. You have answered your own question on aesthetics of the script.
1. Using capitalized letters indicates the tone of the message which cannot be expressed in words when chatting, for example.
2. I think technically, if it is the plural of needle that you are alluding to, it should be preceded by the definite article! 😛
3. Which particular example of mine are you referring to? The US one is what you are addressing in item 4, I assume.
4. Putting full-stops is a major hindrance as far as typing on the keyboard is concerned. Far more simpler to hit the caps lock once or hold the Shift key depressed.
5. I believe I have argued in favour of capitalization to enhance the aesthetics of the written text.
1. Can you please explain exactly what tone capital letters express?
2. Only if “Needles” is already mentioned somewhere. If it is the very first sentence of a story, then “Needles” cannot be preceded by the definite article. I may not be even referring to a particular set of needles. Consider another example : “Cigarettes can kill you!”
3 -> 4. Ya,Right! And it is not painful to start every sentence with a capital letter. Statistically, sentences and proper nouns together occur far more frequently than abbreviation.
5. Use right fonts, colour and size to improve aesthetics. And as you mentioned, it is personal choice.
1. I would better explain this in person or over the phone. I am NOT going to write it all out here! (Get my point about the tone I am alluding to?)
2. The first word begins with the capitalized character, so what’s your point? Needles(s) to say, capitalization does go some way into REDUCING the confusion. I never claimed that it would make a Utopian world where there will be no confusion whatsoever.
3. I have nothing against using abbreviations with full-stops interspersed. But it does help to have the capitalizations too. What is your problem with that? What big deal of extra memory do they take?! My computer’s word processor is so fast that I wouldn’t notice if it were any faster!
4. Exactly, since it is a personal choice, I will have to think what colours/fonts appeal to my reader and I wonder what I will do in case my readers have conflicting tastes. I think you fed that aesthetics word into my brain through your comment. I just meant non-monotonous!
1. By the same logic, you would also want Oxford to include words like : “:)”, “:P”, “luv” in their dictionary.
2. Any system that is not consistent or useless should not be used. The system that uses capital and small letters is both. Hence, it should not be used.
3. Again, ask any of your computer/electronics engineer friends for a second opinion about the efficiency of such systems.
4. Variety should be an attribute of your language, not the script :).