Some countries are limiting access to the Internet by individuals, business and nongovernmental groups in an effort to continue their control over the information their people get about their government and the outside world. Some countries are limiting access to this latest tool in the Information Revolution in order to preserve lucrative state-run monopolies. But, individuals and groups in these societies are finding ways to circumvent the government monopolies.

Steven Goldstein, program director for interagency and international coordination at the National Science Foundation, believes that the Internet is a powerful tool for bringing about open and competitive economies and free political systems.

Question: Are government, business or individuals taking the lead in expanding the Internet, providing more access to the Internet in developed and in developing countries?

Goldstein: That's a difficult question because every country is different, and if I had to give a one-word answer, I'd say "everybody." I think that Europe, Western Europe, at least, and a whole a lot of Eastern Europe are very much like the United States in that the Internet is being used by most sectors of society.

The United States is perhaps three to five years ahead, but the gap is closing quickly, when we talk about Europe. The reason that we might be ahead is that European countries have historically had monopoly telecommunications providers. The prices have been very high for the user, many times the prices that U.S. people pay, and as a result growth in Europe has been somewhat inhibited.

Monopolies also don't have to be as responsive to their users, their customers as companies that are competing, so it's been harder for Internet service providers in other countries to get the telecommunications facilities that they needed in order to operate. In some cases the monopolies are trying to set up Internet services of their own, and so it's to their benefit to inhibit the growth of competing providers; and since they are in control of the facilities, they can control their competitors.

A case in point is China. The Ministry of Post and Telecommunications in China controls most of the circuits, and they wanted to control the Internet so that they could be the sole providers. But some other ministries have access to telecommunications facilities, and they are developing competing systems. Despite the efforts of the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications in China to monopolize Internet growth, there is quite rapid growth in certain areas.

For example, there is the China Education and Research Network, which is largely an academic network, and that's growing rapidly even though it gets most of its facilities from the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. I really don't want to single out China here; the same thing is happening in several other countries.

Q: Who is pushing for alternatives to the state monopolies and how did they start?

Goldstein: As a general rule, the rapid growth of the Internet is due to hard-working entrepreneurs whether they happen to be within government agencies or nongovernmental organizations or just private business people. And everywhere you look in any country where there is Internet, the growth is exponential, explosive.

But you say, who is doing that? In the early days, it was the academic sector that was doing it, and often it had to fight entrenched government bureaucracies to get licenses to operate. A good example is Peru. The Academic Network of Peru grew very, very fast after initially overcoming the objections of government agencies that wanted to control this method of providing information; even though the agencies weren't technically capable of doing it, they didn't want to let anybody else do it.

Now, an interesting thing has happened in Peru. The telephone monopoly was bought up by Telephonic de Hispana, which is the Spanish PTT, which has bought monopoly rights to a number of PTTs in Latin America, and they have introduced an Internet service, and they are trying to crush the academic Internet service.

Q: I take it that you feel that all countries should have some competition in telecommunications services?

Goldstein: That's one of the principles that Vice President Gore enunciated as part of proposal for a global information infrastructure, to promote free and open competition and free and open access. It was also enunciated in the Summit of the Americas (held in December 1994) by the vice president. We believe that competitive provision of services would be to everybody's benefit.

Q: How are governments of developed and developing countries using the Internet?

Goldstein: Governments use the Internet in two ways. One, they use it as any other business would for internal communications or for communications with customers. Two, they use it to provide services, to provide informational services.

So, for example, both the United States and Canada and, I imagine, many other countries have very useful Web pages where you can get information and download forms, get names and addresses of people you want to contact. Some of the names are uplinks; if you click on them on the Web page, you can actually send electronic mail to people in government. So, it's for conducting your own and for providing informational services to the public.

I think one of the first governments to adopt the Web for doing business was Costa Rica.

Q: How did that come about, and what did they do?

Goldstein: Well, I'm a very bad historian, so I can't remember the date. But just when the U.S. government was looking around to use the Web, the government of Costa Rica had adopted Internet technology to do its business. And one of the reasons is that somewhere in the laws of Costa Rica it is written that all citizens will be computer literate. So they train all the kids in school, even in remote villages that have a computer. The kids are taught to use computers as part of their schooling. And so it pays off on a national level; most of the population will accept computers, just the way it will accept any other appliance.

So it was just natural when the Internet was introduced into Costa Rica that sooner or later the government would use it. In Costa Rica there are essentially three classes of Internet users or three sectors of the Internet. There is the academic sector, the government sector, and the commercial sector.

Q: Are nonprofit organizations as well as academic organizations using the Internet a lot outside of the United States?

Goldstein: Absolutely. Now, the nongovernment organizations (NGOs) are probably among the more burdened organizations when it comes to getting access to the Internet largely because they don't have a lot of money.

I've seen the argument in many countries: "We (nonprofit organizations) do so much good for the country and because we have so little money, we should be given the same kind of access as the academic sector."

The academic sector usually turns around and says, "Well, wait a minute; we were given (in some countries) especially low rates because we were so important to the country and to the country's growth, but part of the bargain is we can't let anybody use the network that's not in the academic sector. And so you, nongovernmental organization, you're going to have to go and get your service from somebody else." And when they go to somebody else, somebody else says, "Sure, but you have to pay the same rates that everybody else pays." And the NGOs reply, "But we can't afford it".

In some countries the academic sector has a lot of people in it who might be called establishment, whereas the NGOs often have groups that might be considered anti-establishment; so there is an element of class struggle involved in this thing, too.

Q: Will the Internet, to use a phrase that's pretty popular, contribute to building a "global village?"

Goldstein: It already has. As an example, if you want to be a tourist in some country, you can find Web pages about that country and find out what's going on. In many cases you can make hotel reservations, you can register for tours and you can find out about concerts. You can use your charge card to do that in many cases because they've got anti-theft systems on the Internet. You know, if you're persistent and spend a few hours searching around, you can find out about almost anything that you want in many parts of the world.

I think more important than that is there are a lot of discussion groups composed of people with shared areas of interest from all parts of the world, and they are just regular members of the community.

This way you can be part of a community without any national borders. Anybody can join an Internet discussion group. Where we happen to be physically is unimportant; we're just part of that community. There are thousands of mailing lists for interest groups.

As I've said, networks have been established in different ways in different countries. In some cases entrepreneurs have set up the network. For example, the first provider that went on line in Uganda was a commercial company. The first provider that went on line in Mongolia, and still the only provider in Mongolia, was a commercial company.

The biggest market share provider in the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union is a commercial company, REOCOM.

Q: What is the future of the Worldwide Web?

Goldstein: We have to make a distinction between the Worldwide Web and the Internet. The Worldwide Web is probably the most used tool on the Internet today. I think it's eclipsed even e-mail in its popularity.

When people talk about "surfing the Web," they are talking about the Worldwide Web. E-mail messages tend to be rather small; Web page contents tend to be rather large. So I could send 10 or 20 e-mail messages and still have less total information than I'm sending out than what I've got on the one complicated Web page. So the Web tends to be, I think, the most recognized metaphor of the Internet.

Q: Do you agree with those who believe that this new technology will have profound effects on our societies?

Goldstein: The Internet continues to undergo metamorphosis and will probably continue to do that for years and years and years. At this particular point in its life cycle, it reaches most countries of the world, at least the capital cities, and its reach in developing countries will be spreading, both geographically and throughout society.

It has managed in almost every country to defy those who would control it, who want to control the freedom of expression and information. Therefore, it is a wonderful tool for the free and open exchange of information and opinion, techniques, throughout the world.

As one of our diplomats said about one of the trouble spots of the world, if we could manage to give everybody a computer with Internet access, the bad guys would have a hard time taking over again.

Jerry Stilkind is a writer on information and other global issues for the U.S. Information Agency