The Hindu : E-commerce taking over Internet: VC

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 01, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram

E-commerce taking over Internet: VC

By Our Staff Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM MAY 31. With commercial interests having taken over the information superhighway, the Internet, instead of becoming a participatory medium and an information delivery system, is now emerging as a commodity delivery system, B. Ekbal, the Vice-Chancellor of University of Kerala, has said.

He was making a presentation on the Social Impacts of IT, at the monthly meeting of the Association of British Scholars here at the British Library on Thursday.

The Internet's primary utility of access to information is being overshadowed with e-commerce having taken over the world wide web.

With a lot of multinational companies handling the technology, the information highway is now the conduit between big business interests and consumers.

Net users have become captive markets for MNCs, and not citizens to be connected, as is evident in the manner in which personal e-mail boxes are being flooded with junk mail and promotional campaigns, Dr. Ekbal pointed out.

``The advantage of information technology, I feel, is its anarchic nature. Even Governments are becoming obsolete, political borders are disappearing, taxes, national currencies, local censorships are all becoming meaningless as the Net routes around them. While censorship might not be the answer, an open debate has to be started on how the quality of information on the Net can be improved, its credibility asserted,'' he said.

There is a `Misinformation Epidemic' on the Net, as high quality information is available only at a price.

Netizens are drowning in information, yet they are starved of knowledge, he pointed out.

Lack of useful information, weak search mechanisms, slow downloading, problems of copyright violations and cost of high quality information are all factors impeding information access. A major social impact of information technology has been the `Digital Divide' - the `IT haves' and `IT have-nots'_ that it has created between and within nations, Dr. Ekbal said. This digital divide is widening between developed and developing nations and within developed nations, between the rich and the poor.

The high goals of IT can be achieved only if the conventional usability problems such as poor telephone lines and cable faults can be surmounted and user-centred design methods are adapted. One should also tackle the question of privacy of Net users, he pointed out. A lot of personal information is being collected and rapidly disseminated, which has also led to the development of a lot of information security measures such as firewall, smart cards etc.

Individual privacy Vs Social Participation is the latest dilemma, spawning what is called Information Privacy Schizophrenia in the U.S, he said. With emerging technologies, the life expectancy of computers is now no more than two years.

As these machines contain a lot of toxic material such as lead, cadmium and mercury and cannot be re-cycled easily, their disposal is posing a grave environmental problem now.

A global communication oligopoly is now emerging with the convergence of voice, data and video images. A lot of mergers and acquisitions, like that of Time Warner and America Online, are now taking place between media giants and telecommunication giants.

It is these oligopolies which will decide which of the three forces - the human thirst for knowledge, the demand for entertainment and diversion or provision of online goods and services - should dominate the information superhighway, Dr. Ekbal said.

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E-commerce taking over Internet: VC