Another example is sex tourism, which can be disguised under the cloak of tourism, and within this, under a number of other seemingly innocent guises romance, adventure, and even culture.

The Internet has become an important vehicle for the promotion of sex tourism because of the need for highly localised information, and the added bonus of privacy when it comes to information delivery. When travelling to any place in the world, there are websites that can tell you where to go to for sexual services, how much you have to pay for them, and even some accounts of those who have visited these places.

However, information and action flow both ways on the Internet. When addressing these issues through its website, human rights organisation Equality Now urges its readers to take action against sex tour operators by writing to their law enforcement agencies. I found several excellent pieces addressing the issue on other websites, two from Donna Hughes of the University of Rhode Island, and one from Natalie Collins of the University of California ? Los Angeles.

On the topic of religion, how do communities of faith maintain ideological purity and fervour in an increasingly pluralistic climate wherein the broadcast and interactive functions of the Internet have enabled a proliferation of ideologies and identities? A personal experience may serve as an illustration.

Two years ago, the Trinity Theological Seminary in Singapore assembled a group of theologians and professionals to debate the issue “Homosexuality and the Church”. I was invited to present a sociological perspective. The team spent a year or so writing and discussing each of the six papers. Towards the end of the project, we met up with a group of gay Christians at their request.

What struck me in this session was a casual remark that the gay community in Singapore had already “scrutinised” and debated the implications drawn from our papers. E-mail and many of the gay web pages on the Internet have no doubt significantly contributed to this debate. These websites, some with their own chat functions, represent more specific examples of how the Internet has allowed such special interest groups to flourish by providing information resources and various forms of support.

The proliferation of information over the Internet has also provided a wider spectrum of viewpoints on all issues. For example, Exodus International manages a website that represents conservative Christian viewpoints on homosexuality. On the other side, the Skeptic Tank website is dedicated to “exposing destructive beliefs and ideologies”, including conservative homosexual viewpoints.

These examples indicate an important point. In the digital information age, it becomes increasingly difficult (but not impossible) to maintain moral and ideological stances because of incessant challenges from competing viewpoints.

This has implications for governments in their defence of foreign policy; corporations in protecting their business practices; religious and ethnic communities in preserving and propagating their beliefs and ways of life, and parents in how they socialise their children. As a father of three young children, I often wonder how the Internet will impact the next generation.

In the digital age, one major challenge to today’s parents is ploughing through the information maze in order to explain consequences with much greater clarity than our parents needed to do. As communities of fate increasingly face competition from communities of choice, we need to ensure that the personal choices our children make are informed ones.

A historian writing about Finland suggested that the Finns embrace new technology with great passion because they have a weak craft tradition and a general infatuation with modernity.

Too many societies share this enthusiasm. In our rush to be passionate adopters, we need to be mindful of the social consequences, both good and bad, of such embraces.

We should indeed feel attracted and repelled by the Internet at the very same time.

Associate Professor K C Ho is the co-ordinator of the Information and Communication Management Programme at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. To contact him, please write to: icmhokc@nus.edu.sg

Go to Page 1