President Bush has avoided receiving emails while his opponent Vice President Al Gore has for years pushed aggressively Information Superhighway developments in the U.S. What has this told Mr Average American?

What about this rather small place but world-famous information society Hong Kong?

In Hong Kong, the IT and broadcasting policy organ ITBB and its department ITSD have for a number of years been educating the public what community electronic services are and would be available under the Digital21 policy, and what help the havenots could get so that they would not be left so far behind. Even government services called Electronic Services Delivery (ESD) have been contracted out to a service provider for better promotion. A new piece of law called Electronic Transaction Ordinance has been enacted, and the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and Certification Authority (CA) established to promote/support e-Commerce activities.

However, at the same time, some government organs have been warning citizens not to walk too fast amid information society changes. The anti-corruption organ ICAC has spoken against the unethical behaviours of young people--lying, cheating, disrupting, etc.--in the virtual world, playing games and chatting in ICQ in particular. The Police Department from time to time publishes statistics on electronic crimes such as theft, hacking and pornography, which are growing, and issues serious warnings to the general public (mainly telling them: citizens, do equip well to take good care of yourselves!) There have been conflicting reports on whether the mobile phones are harmful to our health due to radiation.

What about the education arena? The Education Department has funded schools to add IT (PCs, networks, teaching aids) so that the latter can as soon as possible implement Government's 'IT in Education' policies. However, achievements have not been as good as what the policy architects said, and views amongst parents, teachers, students, administrators and observers are divided. For example, it is still debatable whether the positive contributions of IT on students' whole-person development are more than its harmful impacts. Amid all the success stories about use of IT in education, in Septemeber 2000, a worldwide organisation for protecting children rights issued a report to discourage use of PCs in schools which were said to be harmful to children's growth, physically, mentally and psychologically.

Signals in the information society seem so confusing for Mr Average Citizen to follow, including those given by the Government. How is he going to learn, buy, subscribe, invest, use…in the months ahead? Or should he continue to wait and see?

Reflecting further, no wonder all the optimistic predictions on the growth of dotcoms, e-commerce, etc. have proved to be wrong. Looking ahead, many eyeballs are now focusing on 3G and broadband products and services.

Personally I hope that a major societal 'resistance' against IT will not occur. However, my advices for Mr Average Citizen are:

Do you have some good advice to give to the general public who are lost most of the time in a rapidly changing information society? Or do you want to express your views as well including frustration? Please email me at: clam@kamching.com