If the Internet was comparable to a human, it would be in like a person who reaches puberty in his twenties and then achieves a growth spurt that wouldn't stop --- EVER. Even though the Internet was really born in the 70s, it never really got its break until two decades later. I remember being sixteen and wondering what the growing catch-phrase "the Internet" meant. That was four years ago.

During the six-month transition from secondary school to polytechnic, I signed up for "the Internet" and discovered a whole new dimension of culture and information right at my disposal --- my two comrades being my keyboard and mouse.

The World Wide Web started its invasion here in Singapore as early as 1993. It seeped quietly onto the scene and has exploded since in Singapore, where I was born and raised.

Back in 1993, personal computers were slowly making their invasion into homesl. It was then only a matter of time before someone figured out that you only needed a phone line to plug into the world. Literally speaking, if the Internet was an explosion, it would have engulfed the entire planet in a cloud of smoke, debris and landmines - such is the plague of its expansion.

"All progress is based upon a universal innate desire of every organism to live beyond its means." - Samuel Butler

As Asia expands rapidly both as a business hub and a media hub, it faces an ever-increasing hunger for a superfast exchange of information. Within a span of four years, Asian countries can now boast a mighty percentage of their population regularly making their way into the global village.

Ana Jumari

In Singapore alone, a hefty 60% of all households are at least plugged into this global village, not to mention the thousands of new companies venturing into e-commerce everyday. According to the Asia Cyberatlas, the most extensive Internet users in Asia (by figure) are the Japanese, making up approximately 19 million users. Koreans come a close second, amassing 13 million users. There are approximately 10 million Internet users in China, coming in third in the league.

Over the next three years, India will gross approximately 9 million Internet users. With these figures constantly on the rise, Asian youths and yuppies have settled comfortably into our new adjective for this IT era --- now, we are collectively known as "Internet-savvy".

The majority of us avid Internet users were introduced to the Internet as we were growing up and --- the net itself grew and developed with us.

In the last year, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) went over their heads trying to match each other in user packages and deals to meet this growing need for the online gateway. Where four years ago subscribers were given small tastes of the Internet at average costs, now subscribers are given maximum access to the village at a minimum price tag. Faster and better connections are constantly cropping up, such as the cable modem and DSL lines.

All these only strengthen the grasp this new-age portal has over Asia. It is fast becoming an integral aspect of computer households and we take for granted that the Internet technology has always been and will always be at our disposal. In fact, within the next few years, the Internet will probably be considered a necessity in Asia. A daily dosage of requirement much like the morning newspaper. It is already slowly replacing the library as far as theoretical research is concerned.

But what exactly about the Internet is luring so many of us to its vast, never-ending arena?

"I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." - Isaac Asimov

Japanese animation (Anime) is internationally famous, but a huge percentage of fans still reside in Asia, most notably Japan (for obvious reasons), Malaysia and Singapore.

When "pokemon" was the rage, websites such as Pokemon.com were visited constantly. It seems Asians can hardly get enough of cute cartoon monsters and pretty, wide-eyed Japanese maidens.

As with the rest of our international counterparts, popular search engines such as Yahoo! and Google are almost indefinitely hot favourites with Asian surfers. So is external email service provider Hotmail.

The Internet, in addition to being a huge, supersonic encyclopedia, has also become a flea market for "free" downloadable programs. Downloadable software has become a popular "collectible" for Asian youths because the increasing need for e-commerce sophistication means the necessity for computer software is building up. And while computers serve their basic mandatory needs, a surplus of hardware and software makes them run like a leopard and purr like a kitten while performing two thousand and one programs.

And these two thousand or so programs?

PC games, multimedia programs and sometimes just plain old, silly media spoof (in the form of Mpeg videos and Flash plug-ins no less) passed back and forth via e-mail communities of online and offline friends. Among the popular for PC games are such sites as GameSpot.com, and TheZone.com.

Another popular website for my Gen-Y peers here in Singapore is Download.com (as if I'm not rubbing in the obvious!) It offers the Usual Suspects --- digitized music (Mp3s), PC games, etc .. Heck, they even have a link to the notorious Napster --- the Mp3 search engine that's caused so much ruckus in the music industry that it has had to shut down more than once. But demand has been intense, and more than once Napster bounces back on its feet.

Speaking of Mp3s, collection is no longer becoming an international worry, it is an international worry! Now not only does the industry and their fellow commercial musicians worry about extensive European and American sites like Audiofind, during the last year, Asian Mp3 webpages have been sprouting around the village like mushrooms! Obviously as the Internet expands in Asia, Asian youths have picked up this convenient, cheap source of digital music that can also be made available to them offline --- much like the CDs that we buy, only "free".

One of the most popular Asian Mp3 sites is TheMusicLover.com, owned by a Viet youth, whose webpage has had a whopping two million visits. Several attempts have been made to shut his site down, but sheer resilience and increasing anonymity have guaranteed his patrons at least another year of his service.

Sites such as Audioload.com are ambitious attempts to give voice to and feature Asian bands. True proponents of Asian music would not complain that this website only offers at most, online samples and never full downloads, even though most of these bands are non-commercial. Bands that are ripped off for Mp3 versions most often can afford to be. MTVAsia also hosts its own chat network, where followers can gather and discuss what, where, when, why and whos of the latest in the scene. Speaking of which ..

CHAT ME UP!

Before, there were chat sites that were thought of as ingenious, such as Yahoo! and Alamak (the latter being better received because of its name, which Malaysians and Singaporeans, translating it as direct colloquialism, can relate to). Then in mid-97, the ultimate chat program arrived here, and millions of Asian net users flocked to it. The IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, instantly became a hot favourite because of its technology that allows users to chat in real time, unlike the chat programs of before that constantly hung and had an average of more than a minute response-time.

Now, as Internet relay chat (IRC) becomes more coveted by many Asian online users, chat "scripts" have sprung up like mushrooms. Most often, Asian chatters can download scripts in their own language because authors of these scripts are their fellow countrymen.

CLICK ME!

Software like Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe Pagemill are user-friendly web authoring tools. And like their mega-expensive software siblings, they have fallen victim to Asian software pirates. Since these user-friendly webpage launchers are being made available to us by the masses, we now have the luxury of choice --- whether to walk into the international spotlight to be read and viewed by people from the other six continents, .. people who, until now, had been the ones we had been reading only about.

Downloadable software like Cute FTP (Fast Transfer Protocol) help make the process of uploading less a pain and more a comfort. Asian Internet service providers have caught on to this lucrative prospect, and have offered to host webpages for a fee. Obviously the competition is personified in the form of longer, more established web hosts such as GeoCities.com and Xoom.com , who have been providing personal hosting years before and for absolutely free.

Why (?!) why (?!) why (?!)

"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal." --- Albert Einstein

Somewhere along the line of the Internet boom, computer "geniuses" developed the new terrorist the global village affectionately calls "virii".

Among these "geniuses" stand a few Asians, some of whom have been responsible for at last two internationally notorious virii. Last year, Taiwanese Cheng Ing-hau created the Chernobyl virus, named after the Russian nuclear disaster in Chernobyl. Chernobyl was born out of his frustration that anti-virus software was useless against the virii he contracted whilst downloading programs from the net.

In April this year, the I Love You virus unleashed devastation to infected users and caused hundreds of companies to temporarily shut down for its expulsion. Among the affected were the US Pentagon and the British Parliament.

Even though the Internet has been flooding Asia like water from a broken dam, to date there are only about 150,000 Internet users in the Philippines --- but the culprit? 22-year-old Filipino Onel de Guzman.

Since, at the time, the Internet seemed to slow its invasion on this side of Asia, it was only after the entire drama that the Philippines passed an E-commerce Act holding hackers and computer criminals accountable. One thing for sure though, the Philippines may be slower catching up in the Asian Internet invasion, but it certainly has started churning out its fair share of Internet "terrorists". Has virii-authoring become a favourite pastime of the new net-savvy Asian?

As technology progresses, the Internet obviously becomes one of the first mediums to be used as the guinea pig (and more often successful than not). Over the last two years, the Internet has become a huge marketplace, boasting global transactions between countries that are halfway across the earth from each other. We are picking up on this on this side of the world.

Singapore youth have already ventured into bill payments online and he/she has taken to this like a duck to water because it is fast, efficient and most importantly, convenient. Sites such as PacFusion.com are massive marketplaces where subscribers can find anything and everything. With this, however, the bittersweet irony somehow seems to be that transactions for Internet usage are being done online as well.

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. --- Pablo Picasso

Over the next decade, the eastern equator might possibly become the core of the Information Technology empire. Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor, launched in May 1996, promises to be an extravagant digital city that works online from head to toe. Singapore is already moving towards their knowledge-based society with Singapore ONE, which was commercially launched last year. With all this hype surrounding the two nations, their citizens will almost indefinitely be molded to adapt into this new age of digital science and the Internet.

With the Internet fast becoming cheap, supersonic in its information retrieval and much more widely available, the Asian audience both younger and older, entranced and lured into its almost hypnotic span of invasion, will obviously continue to grow. In view of all this, one can probably safely assume that within a few years, Asia and the Internet will almost become synonymous. Watch out, Asia!

"This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in." -- Dickens