[This document is a part of the Asia Web Watch: a Register of Statistical Data (est. 1 Oct 1997)] The Size, Content and Geography of Asian Cyberspace:
An Initial Measurement Dr T. Matthew Ciolek
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies,
Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
tmciolek@ciolek.com
http://www.ciolek.com/PEOPLE/ciolek-tm.html To appear in: The Journal of East Asian Libraries, CEAL, 1997.
Document created: 26 Sep 1997. Last revised: 15 Oct 1997 Introduction One of the enduring memories of my childhood in Europe is that of an unheated passenger train traveling through a winter landscape. The windows of my compartment glitter with a coat of frost. The train seems to be cut-off from the world-at-large. It is only by pressing a hand against the surface, or by patient scraping with a key-ring that a tiny patch of glass can be cleared. Then, as I look through the hole I catch a myriad of incoherent images which whoosh by and disappear. How big they really are, and how these fleeting and disjointed images of potential meadows, trees, buildings and mountains relate to each other I cannot tell, for things happen too fast, and too unexpectedly, and the cleared patch is too small to afford a meaningful perspective. Most of us who have access to the Net are well aware that what is happening right now on the Internet is big, unprecedented, and important. Also, we know that it has a direct bearing on our individual and collective futures. But we remain very much like passengers on that frosted-over train, transported willy-nilly to new places but whose overall destination, time-tables and actual route, let alone present whereabouts, are essentially unknown. | |
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