This is a serious issue, in view of the potential importance of the Internet for all spheres of life everywhere, and because of the trend for the facility to be increasingly dominated by a few countries and private companies. As the Internet goes global it encounters different cultures, which react to it in different ways. It would be far too simplistic to view this process in terms of ‘cultural imperialism’, assuming that old habits can simply be washed away. What actually happens is, as new users get on-line, a number of new virtual worlds are created. These are a mix of traditional culture and cyber culture, influenced by and adapted to existing communicative practices and value systems. In fact, this is how cultural encounters always take place. People interpret new influences according to existing frames of reference, and accommodate or reject them accordingly, the result of which is a combination of the old and the new, unique to each specific context. In the case of the Internet, one can but expect that responses to on-line behaviour will vary from country to country, each context offering new interpretations of and responses to the world of cyberspace.

Knowledge and information are in the process of replacing labour and capital as the central variables of the western economy: the process of production, consumption and management are becoming increasingly reliant on ‘knowledge generation, information exchanges and information handling’. In this new economy, information is digital based, wired and decentralized as opposed to the old economy where information was paper based, centralized and isolated. Digital based information is gaining value, allowing businesses to recognize and merge to form multi-functional, multi-product corporations spreading across all continents and enabling the formation of increasingly competitive markets. Information has gained value due to the need for companies to increase productivity, reduce costs, be innovative and be forerunners within a market sector.

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