The latest research from leading telecommunications analyst Gartner confirms what many have long expected — that the Asia Pacific region is poised to overtake the United States in the number of Internet subscribers. According to Gartner, in two years time there will be some 183.3 million Asian Internet users, as opposed to 162 million each in the United States and Europe.
The effect of this development will very probably be profound. For a start, it will mean the Internet will no longer be an American-dominated medium. It may even be that ubiquitous English will begin to give way to the likes of Chinese, Japanese, Malay, Hindi and Urdu. It will also mean that large parts of the Internet will assume a non-Anglo-Saxon shape.
The Chinese government has been seeking to bring its own discipline to Internet usage, to cut down in particular on Internet access to pornography and also what it calls “subversive” content. There are at least 60,000 cafes in China, where the majority of the country’s 26 million subscribers access the Net. The Internet cafes must now install special software to allow the authorities to know what users are looking at. As a short-term measure, this will maintain some discipline in what people access, but in the long run, as individual computer ownership at home spreads, it is going to become increasingly difficult for the police to enforce their rules.
One of the reasons that Internet usage has been spreading so rapidly in Asia is its low cost. The United States, which so prides itself on its own low access charges, brought about by what it claims is stiff competition among US suppliers, actually has much to learn from the way that Asian Internet service providers have managed to price and distribute their product.
It also seems certain that much of the future development of the Internet will be coming from Asia. Indian programmers have established a fearsome reputation for the excellence of their software. Local software companies have undergone their apprenticeship, supporting and servicing large North American and European software companies. Now they are starting to produce their own products, based upon their own rather than other cultures’ priorities and understandings.
The Chinese too have demonstrated great programming acuity. The government is committed to teaching computers and Internet usage to school children from primary school age, because it understands that to prosper in the new Information Technology age, China urgently needs these skills.
Once upon a time, the Internet was the exclusive tool of the privileged few, who could afford the original high subscription costs and the price of the equipment to access it. Nowadays, with affordable access widespread, not least in Asia, it has become a medium available to the man in the street.
The Internet’s potential evils are far outweighed by the vast stores of knowledge and understanding that it can bring to users. It has already revolutionized the way that people around the globe can communicate. With Asian users moving to a position of dominance, we can perhaps expect to see that through their influence there will arise a more thoughtful, even more moral tone to this extraordinary invention.
