VIEWPOINT: Join hands in the quest for 'Net understanding

In this edition, MEDIA launches 'CReATION', an expanded section covering the Internet and all that's happening in that medium. When we first started covering cyberspace in 1996, finding stories worth publishing was like trying to get blood from a stone. Now, MEDIA's editorial team finds itself swamped under a deluge of press releases and phone calls from eager 'Net entrepreneurs banging their own drums. Progress made by the medium and the industry surrounding it has been nothing short of astonishing, given the fact that cyberspace as we know it is barely out of its infancy. Huge amounts of money are being spent not only by marketers building a presence on the Web, but also by those companies who make a living selling the Web, whether they are ISPs, Web designers, website owners or whatever. Last year, advertising expenditure throughout most of Asia received a massive shot in the arm from Internet-related advertising - in Hong Kong alone, monthly expenditure in 1999 in this category had increased 10-fold by last December, compared with January. There is no doubt that the Internet is set to make the kind of an impact in our lives in the way that television did when it was first introduced in the 1950s. There is also no doubt that despite what may transpire on the stock markets of the world, the Internet bubble may occasionally burst, but it will never dissipate entirely. So now it is high time that the advertising and marketing industry gets into gear and makes proper efforts to come to grips with what the medium is really all about, and how best to exploit it. So let's have less bickering, bitching, moaning and finger-pointing and try, instead, to promote learning and share what little knowledge we have about the 'Net. Otherwise, huge opportunities for progress risk being lost as various camps engage in petty playground squabbling over who's right and who's wrong - and what a price to pay just for a fleeting moment of superiority.

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