Even at the village level, gathering, organizing and presenting the news require technology and know-how. And as people become more interested in what is happening outside their village, their province and their nation, more and more technological expertise is required to satisfy that interest.
In this way reporters, editors and publishers came to use the telegraph, the teletype, telephones, cameras and recorders in order to contact sources and document the day's events. They developed high-speed color presses and sophisticated broadcast systems to send out the news to an increasingly interconnected world.
Today advanced communications - including pagers and cellular telephones, faxes and computer networks - are again transforming society, and in turn the journalistic trade. Journalists are not alone in weathering this transformation. Indeed, it is partly because other segments of society are changing so rapidly that journalists in Asia and elsewhere must keep pace.
Improved telecommunications is the foundation for the information revolution sweeping the world. Better telephone service and the ability to accommodate fax and data traffic are necessities, not only for international journalism, but for international commerce in all its forms.
International corporations are willing to make multibillion-dollar investments in telecommunications infrastructure because markets are becoming more global in nature, and because the privatization of Asian telecommunications authorities is increasing the opportunities for profit. The pace of international investment is likely to quicken under the more liberal trade conditions that came into force this year.
The pace of technological innovation is quickening as well: satellite communications and the expansion of data networks are rapidly reducing the physical and political barriers to the flow of information. With regard to the Asia-Pacific region, many experts refer to the potential for "leapfrogging": A powerful jump in economic development could transform the region into the world's leader in information technology.
To this point, the Asia-Pacific region has been a relative laggard in the field. In percentage terms, usage of personal computers and computer networks is four times greater in the United States than in Japan. (1) Wide areas of Asia are not yet hooked up for telephones, let alone data transfer.
But that situation is changing rapidly. The communications boom can be seen in several areas: the ubiquity of cellular phones among the entrepreneurs of Hong Kong and Shanghai, the international deals aimed at upgrading telecommunications in India, the rapid growth in the region's connections to the global network of linked computers known as the Internet.
The Internet is an important indicator of the shape of things to come. Some rate its development on a par with the invention of the printing press, and it illustrates the power of open information systems.
Actually, the Internet was created a quarter-century ago as a means to link together government and academic researchers in the United States, but only in recent years has it been opened to anyone who can connect with its tendrils of telecommunication.
Strictly speaking, the Internet refers only to computer networks interconnected using a standard known as TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol). There are other networks interconnected using different standards - for example, Bitnet, Fidonet and UUCP. But all these different kinds of networks - as well as many corporate computer systems and commercial data services such as CompuServe - can exchange information, by electronic mail if by no other means. This universe of data networks is referred to as the "global network" or "global web."
Although various governments, businesses and organizations control computers or communication links along the way, no one "owns" the global network as a whole. The Internet, for example, was largely the creation of the U.S. government, but today a majority of its users now live outside the United States and are not subject to Washington's laws. (2)
The number of Asian computers connected to the Internet rose by 62 percent in the first six months of 1994, compared with 38 percent in the United States. (3) And one Japanese expert on the information revolution, Shumpei Kumon of the Center for Global Communications, has projected a "thousandfold expansion (in Asian network use) in a mere five years." (4)
Much of this expansion is due to the business sector. Today thousands of companies are using the global network to make business contacts and market their goods and services. In fact, in the United States the commercial sector has the largest proportion of computers hooked up to the Internet. (5) And commercial use is set to skyrocket: Even now, several companies have developed schemes for secure financial transfers via the Internet. (6)
Data networks are used not only for research and business, but for informal, personal communication as well. Today there are highly developed outlets for exchanging gossip and news about a wide variety of interests, and some of those outlets are becoming news sources rivaling traditional publications. For example, the bulletin board known as "soc.culture.indian" is an important source of news about India for worldwide emigres from that country. China News Digest draws together news from Chinese publications and correspondents for distribution via the global network.
It was the lure of video games that first brought computer chips into the home market, and that recreational aspect is likely to be an important factor in bringing network services from the office into the home. In Japan, for example, video game machines already may be linked via the telephone network to receive information and enable players in remote locations to compete against each other. The Internet is also being used to link game players around the world. More advanced networks of the future will be able to carry live audio and video over fiber-optic cable - opening up a brave new world of entertainment and information.
A myriad of commercial projects are aimed at extending the reach of computer networks into consumer markets - primarily to deliver pay-per-view entertainment programming (an application known as "video on demand"); and to encourage home shopping, a method whereby home viewers can examine products via video and purchase them by punching codes into their video controllers.
"When merchandise moves over networks, we get a shipping lane of the speed of light," Internet pioneer Brewster Kahle has observed. "For those developing countries that can ride it, it should be a very fast success curve." (7)
Around the world, governments are formulating policies to develop national and global information infrastructures - telecom-based networks operating at speeds several times greater than now technically possible. National leaders have recognized that enhanced communications will enhance productivity and trade, and thus the growth of networks is becoming an issue of global economic competitiveness.
Japan has announced plans for a nationwide fiber-optic network to be built by 2010 at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. (8) And Japan's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications is promoting the creation of an Asia-wide network regional approach it calls the Asian Information Infrastructure. (9)
In the next few years, China alone plans to connect 250,000 computers to the global network - almost as many as are connected today throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and Singapore have similarly ambitious plans for creating interactive networks in the next five years. (10) Australia and New Zealand already rank among the top countries in terms of Internet growth.
All of the foregoing demonstrates that Asia's urban societies are in for a rapid electronic transformation. The pace of change will be slower in rural areas, but change will come nevertheless. Some of the new technological tools, in fact, will open greater opportunities for small-scale development.
For these reasons alone, journalists in Asia should improve their understanding of the new information technologies. The development of global networks is becoming a significant topic of news coverage, in Asia as in the rest of the world. But there are more specific reasons for journalists to adopt the new technologies.
Just as trade and commerce is no longer confined by national borders, the flow of information is becoming increasingly international. Using computer networks, a Japanese reporter can gather information about trade policy as easily and as cheaply from Washington as from Tokyo. And the same information sources are just as accessible to journalists in Taipei, Singapore or Wellington.
Similarly, media managers can use computer networks to publish internationally - and some Asian organizations, such as the China Business Journal, Kyodo News Service and the Thai News Agency, are already doing so. At the same time, it is possible to receive articles from The New York Times or the London Telegraph on the day of publication by electronic means.
The information revolution blurs not only national borders: It also blurs the distinctions between formal and informal journalism. Each network user has the potential to become an electronic publisher, a source of information and opinion, a guide or a gadfly. For journalists, the result is a wider array of sources, a freer flow of information and a greater opportunity for contacts with "unofficial" sources.
Organizations such as the Nautilus Institute can gather reports from Seoul, Washington and Moscow and send it back out the next day to subscribers around the world, becoming an ad hoc news service on Asian security issues. China News Digest and the Pakistan News Service operate in a similar way.
Individuals in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand can use electronic bulletin boards to vent frustrations about their own governments, or give voice to opinions that would be frowned upon or forbidden in more traditional forums. This, of course, is a particularly controversial development for societies that put a high value on cultural conformity. (11) For example, the venue for this year's meeting of the Internet Society was moved from Singapore to Honolulu, partly because one of the meeting's scheduled speakers had voiced some criticism of Singapore's political system. (12)
To be sure, the global network is no Utopia: There are serious concerns about the uncontrollable distribution of pornography, hate literature and fraudulent or libelous information. The relatively unregulated, freewheeling nature of unofficial network communication means journalists need to be on guard - it's just as easy to pass along erroneous claims or uninformed opinion as it is to transmit the truth.
Considered as a whole, the global network is no better or worse than any community. In fact, networks have given rise to what have been called "virtual communities": webs of personal relationships defined not by physical space but by common interests. Journalists who enter these communities generally do not remain detached observers or unquestioned voices of authority. Like other members of these communities, journalists face questions as well as pose them. Unlike books, documents or even computerized databases such as Nexis/Lexis, computer networks are an "interactive" resource.
In order to get the most out of new information technologies, it will not suffice merely to look up resources as if the network were a reference book. Rather, networks should be used to seek out new contacts, to go door-to-door through the global village, to forge computer-mediated friendships.
The most successful electronic news ventures also offer opportunities for readers to join in dialogues with newsmakers and news gatherers, turning journalism into a two-way flow of ideas. In this direction lies the evolution of a completely new medium: an interactive exchange blending elements of print and broadcast journalism. No one knows precisely where this trail will lead - but media corporations are spending a fortune trying to find out.
What follows is not a comprehensive guide to using the new information technologies. It will be up to each journalist to discover how advanced communications fits into his or her workaday world. Rather, this discussion paper is merely an attempt to trace a path into the frontier - and to show why the journey could be worthwhile.
The path begins with a survey of information tools beginning with telephony, the foundation of today's communications revolution, and ending with emerging forms of satellite and computer-mediated communication. The next section surveys computerized information sources that may be of interest to Asian journalists. Finally, we offer conclusions and recommendations for future media development in this area.