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Communities of all sizes now have the ability to gain access to the Internet for minimal costs. Access to the Internet has created a kind of global “infomarketplacerdquo; by making business information and expert advice readily available. Communities can take advantage of this low‐cost accessibility to spur local economic development and entrepreneurship through collaboration with experts. Communities need to consider what level of Internet connectivity best meets their needs, in view of the cost/benefit ratio of Internet access. Issues and barriers to be dealt with include profit motives, teleliteracy, and technofear.

The past year has seen increased effort across the country to expand networking services in rural areas. This note describes the “rural datafication” activities that CICNet, a regional network in the midwest, is currently pursuing.

I have always marvelled at the beauty of a model ship that is built in a bottle. Because my father collected ship models I was able to watch a retired Danish sea captain painstakingly construct some parts outside the bottle and assemble it all within. I marvel, too, at the online public access catalogues that librarians and automation managers and cataloguers have constructed over the years at great effort and great expense. In a sense, these are similar to the ships in bottles; the OPACs are finely crafted but present only a small window to the information within our libraries. Access is still some‐what limited. Almost all of us still have to view the electronic library through glass teletypes (or perhaps VT‐100 emulation), and it is a rather narrow view.

The rise of the Internet has facilitated net activism among many virtual gay communities in Taiwan. The communication role that the Internet plays is in particular vital, because homosexuality is still considered a taboo in Taiwan's society. Cyberspace created by the Internet forms a unique “space” where local homosexuals can share their experience of being gays with each other. The purposes of this chapter are intended to examine how the Internet facilitated the formation, promotion, and success of gay rights movements among homosexual communities in Taiwan. This chapter uses the Chang-Der Street Police Harassment Incident as a case study to elaborate the Internet's communication role in mobilizing local gay populations to pursue their gay rights. It also investigates the Internet's strategic role as a communication medium in gay rights movements. The case analysis and in-depth interviews help identify several key functions that the Internet can play: to exchange and share information, to organize and coordinate gay rights movements, to record and store historical information, and to lead social and value changes in the future. This chapter explores the potential of the Internet in online community mobilization, an early look at virtual community and net activism.