As well as redrawing class lines and redistributing resources, can the development of the Internet bring the public together to form a close-knit community, creating a new social culture? In the 2009 Pacific Neighborhood Consortium (PNC) Annual Conference scholars from Singapore, Japan and Taiwan shared their own country’s experiences of the Internet and social participation in the interesting reports that they presented.

Philip Chua of Singapore’s National Heritage Board introduced Singapore’s “Cybermuseum.” To raise the level of cultural literacy in Singapore the government used this virtual museum to strengthen interaction between people interested in art and culture. This museum website provides information about current art and cultural events being held in Singapore. Curators and scholars are also encouraged to register a virtual ID and engage in exchange with the general public.

The general user is able to control the leading character on the platform and engage in conversation with other users of Cybermuseum, move freely and even use jumping, waving and other body language to express their feelings, making it like Koei’s “Uncharted Waters” and other RPG online games. Prof. Chua said that Cybermuseum allowed lovers of art and culture to enjoy a virtual platform for exchange that is free of time-space restrictions.

Professor Sato Yoshinori shared Japan’s experience of the implementation of  ALFAE (Area-wide e-Laboratory of Food, Agriculture and Environment) digital cultural practice. The ALFAE team went to the Himalayas in Nepal and used advanced robots to monitor the weather and glaciers, also helping local people establish an international information system. When the robots gather complete weather data, it is immediately transmitted to the villagers and providing important reference information for agriculture. ALFAE also helped farmers in Japan, Asia and other countries to use IT to establish agricultural product records, increasing product safety and value added.

Professor Xiao Jing-zheng, Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica presented a paper on the Typhoon Morakot disaster, examining possible ways of using the Internet in disaster relief. When the typhoon hit and news of the scale of the disaster began to emerge, a number of online communities began to mobilize to help the victims, unofficially and outside the government disaster relief system. Fellow scholars in the Institute also established a disaster relief website for the integration of manpower, materials and know-how. Professor Xiao thinks that since IT can help increase the efficiency of profit making industries, it can also be used to help improve the operations of non-profit organizations, making a contribution to social welfare. 

Dr. Chen Sheng-wei, also of Academia Sinica, introduced the "Crowdsourcing" concept that is currently gaining popularity in North America and Europe. As the name suggests it involves using the general public as a source of information. Today, even with IT highly developed, scientists still find that there are many things that computers can’t deal with.  Taking “finding a short cut to Taoyuan Airport” as an example, it is better to ask a taxi driver than to use a GPS. Also, in some detail recognition work, human intelligence can do what computers can’t (where was this photograph taken? Who is the person third from the right? Is this hand written letter an n or an h?)  Scientists thus outsource action and image identification, language explanation and other “work that requires complex intelligence”. Amazon has a number of these “work opportunities.”

The speed of development of IT and the Internet is far greater than what was imagined ten years ago. Although the class and resource divisions caused by the digital gap seem to worsen all the time, if the Internet platform is used with good intentions it can be expected that the joint power of mankind will allow the problems faced to be solved.