Power Of The Internet - Article Updates

This is off Y2K topic, sort of, but has relavance. It illustrates the potential power of the internet to create change on a global scale, and why various governments (extrapolate ours) may be quaking in their digital boots, so to speak, trying to prevent bad information from influencing our minds (and hearts). --Diane

San Jose Mercury News http://www5.mercurycenter.com/breaking/docs/015215.htm Posted at 12:46 a.m. PST Friday, December 4, 1998

Vietnam tightening Internet controls Reuters

HANOI -- The communist party in southern Ho Chi Minh City has instructed local authorities to establish a new body aimed at tightening control over Internet access and management, municipal officials said on Friday.

One official said the order was given after the local party organisation had considered a report prepared by the city People's Committee on Internet operations and use in the former Saigon.

He added that it was unclear when the new control body would be established.

City Communist Party officials were not immediately available to comment.

The official Saigon Giai Phong (Saigon Liberation) daily reported on Friday that the committee would be headed by a people's committee deputy chairman together with a senior city police officer.

The newspaper said the committee would regulate and coordinate the management, establishment and operation of the Internet in Ho Chi Minh City, communist-ruled Vietnam's commercial hub.

``The city police will coordinate...building and implementing a plan for the timely prevention and settlement of bad information,'' the daily said without giving details.

Vietnam officially hooked up to the Internet last December but high charges -- in what is one of the world's poorest countries -- have kept the number of subscribers low.

By last month there were just 16,000 Internet subscribers out of a population of 78 million, official media said.

Access to many Web sites -- especially pages viewed as having reactionary political content such as those operated by anti-communist overseas Vietnamese groups -- is blocked by means of ``firewall'' software.

And...

http://www5.mercurycenter.com/breaking/docs/027330.htm

Posted at 6:14 p.m. PST Thursday, December 3, 1998

Survey finds a growing passion for the Net

BY JAMES A. DUFFY Knight Ridder News Service

WASHINGTON -- Americans who get linked to the Internet quickly develop a strong passion for the new medium, a national survey indicates.

Nearly a third of the online population has been using the Internet for a year or less, but nearly half of Internet users now consider the medium a necessity and almost three-quarters use it to make buying decisions, the report from Roper Starch Worldwide shows.

The study by the national research organization, commissioned by America Online and conducted in August, was based on interviews with 1,000 Internet users nationwide.

About 90 percent said they use the Internet to stay in touch with family and friends and have found cyberspace an easier way to communicate than traditional methods.

Most said they would pick the Internet over a telephone or a television if stranded on a desert island. Nearly 80 percent described the computer is the most important invention of the 20th century. Eleven percent chose the telephone and 7 percent said the television was the most important invention.

[Forget they need electricity to power the techno toys.]

More than 70 percent said they regularly boot up their computers to obtain information about products to buy.

Nearly half of those who own laptop computers take them along on vacations to go online, the report found. About a quarter of them check their email while on vacation.

``The study shows that online users are very self-aware of the new ground they are breaking simply by being online,'' said Edward Keller, Roper Starch Worldwide president.

Fifty-seven percent of all new cyber-surfers in the past 12 months have been women, who have helped propel strong recent growth in online usage. The Internet population is three times larger today than it was in 1995.

Eighty percent of those using Internet services today have advised those close to them to get online. Squashing the idea that young people are more technologically savvy than older people, 56 percent of those over 50 polled said they would miss having online access if it were no longer available. Forty-seven percent of 18- to 24-year-olds gave the same answer.

President Bill Clinton was the number one choice of both men and women when asked whom they would have a cyber-chat with if given the choice of any living person. Bill Gates was a close second, followed by the pope and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

* * ' * * ' * * ' * * ' * * ' * * ' * * '

If you were able to have a cyber-chat with President Bill Clinton or the Pope, what would you like to ask them??

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 04, 1998

Answers

I would ask the Pope to send Bill to purgatory indefinitely... maybe give him some dog food for good behavior...... maybe. Rocky H.

-- Rocky H (rharp1@webtv.net), December 04, 1998.