Dr Onno W. Purbo: is a well-known media columnist and author of more than 20 books on Internet technology. He is active in over 70 Indonesian Internet mailing lists. One of Indonesia's leading experts on Internet technologies and education, he has taught at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), and  now dedicates his life to educatingthe Indonesian community on the Internet and Computer technologies, spending many hours in giving talks & workshops in public, schools & universities. His goal is to open the  Indonesian mind and todouble the number of Indonesian Internet users every year. In this way he  hopes to see an Indonesian knowledge-based society established .

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(too long & unstructured) ABSTRACT

Beginning in 1986-1987, a few Indonesian amateur radio buffs communicated  on a slow 1200bps TCP/IP radio network (similar to the  technology currently being implemented in rural schools). In 1992-1993, led by the University of Indonesia & Ministry of Technology, we tried to build the Internet in Indonesia. In 1994, IndoNet was the first commercial ISP  established. Currently, 160+ ISP licenses have been granted with about 60+ ISP operational. In reality, 60-70% Indonesian are served by various form of Internet cafes (known as warnet), but none of these activities has been driven by the Indonesian government; they are mostly private & community driven. Thus, Internet is actually accessible to a much wider range of people than simply those who can afford a personal computer. It costs US$0.5/hour in most warnets. Warnet technology at schools reduces the cost to US$0.5/month/student. Having 25.000 high schools with 2-3 million students, it would a strategic move increase the Internet penetration by Interneting schools (currently only 600+ schools & 200+ universities are on the Internet). Trick [unclear?] in Linux Terminal Server Program (LTSP), enables us to use old 486 machines as high speed Internet terminals. The warnets are virtually organized at asosiasi-warnet@yahoogroups.com. Wireless infrastructure at 2.4GHz (soon on 5 & 5.8GHz forcedly stolen[??]) is used by the good Internet Cafés. Some of the infrastructure is build by ourselves. Education processes becomes an integral part of business processes as no market, mass & demand will lead to a failure business processes. As a result, an estimated 2-3 million Indonesian Internet users are on the Internet and doubling each year. Hopefully, these success stories are not claimed by the government to attract just another foreign debt.

The young & educated people are the early adopter of Internet. Pornographics  access & chatting are their early main interest, most are shifting towards more producative usage of the Internet after 3-5 months. Community based forum, either thru chatting or mailing lists are formed. On the Internet infrastructure, Indonesian discussion groups spurs on the Internet. Today, more than 4000 mailing lists mainly concentrated at http://www.yahoogroups.com are used by the tenth thousand Indonesians to interact every day. Most of the cyber communities are dominated by educated people, some even hold strategic position in private sector / business associations. Having all these important persons in the private sector accessible over the network, it is a heaven for journalists to observe quality public discussions over the mailing lists. Most of Indonesian IT journalists are located at prasasti@yahoogroups.com, they generate quality news & information some based on the discussion on the Internet. On the other side, sharing of knowledge & information over the media with the help of these cyber journalists is critical for setting the public opinion & able to move a large mass towards certain direction.

Having these platforms at hand, two (2) main stream of Internet applications are formed. In one end, the techies, they pushes demand on IT knowledge and pushing book publishers, writers, magazines to publish more on IT. As well as, IT seminars, talkshow, mailing lists & workshops. On the other end, the end users, they pushes similar pressure as the techies at lower technical content and more applicable contents. Major audience are young & educated people. some of us are volunteer to give free talks at schools, universities, pesantrens (Islamic schools). A rate of 1-2 seminars / talk a day, and 1-2 workshop / month is really a high traffic for the speakers. To attract / educate others to become a writer / speaker, we build penulis-ti@yahoogroups.com.

In democratic platform, after 32 years in darkness & haunted by horror stories of those who speak against the regime in power, removal of media “regulation” in GusDur era seems to provide a significant help in opening the common people’s knowledge & perception. Media is an excellent platform especially for one-way information delivery mechanism.

Internet & community radio would be an excellent platform for both one and two-ways interactive medium. Ability to merge conventional media and the new two-ways media would lead to an excellent platform in making a more transparent public policy & bottom-up self-finance community based development in Indonesia.

Internet interactive platform is an important tool to enable transparency & democratization in Indonesia. The government as expected is very conservative. The construction of Indonesian public policies is normally set in secrecy, involving few consultants and small sample of the society. Draft of any public policy is normally a secret and forbidden for public to see / read. Sadly, the official public documents are difficult to find (especially in softcopy), some may trade hardcopies public document for a price. Unfortunately, some public documents bind the public to abide licensing & permit processes in their business, which, in the end force the public to dig deeper into their pocket especially to cover the existing corruption & inefficiency. Furthermore, it is uncommon for the government to speak openly in public, fear in making incorrect statements that may lower one’s structural position is understandable. Consequently, it is fatal for government position in public.

Different from government pattern, activists rely heavily on Internet interactivity in setting public opinion. It seems a community based independent regulatory body rely heavily in consensus mechanisms rather than the Indonesian written law would suite much better in Indonesian Internet based society. A significant impact is shown in the area of information, computer & communication, especially in the area with significant impact in welfare / economics / immediate profits for society at large. Although, some human right activist surface in some areas.

A real example of people’s power is exposed in the regulation of the usage of 2.4GHz, community based independent regulatory body is used. Common ground amongs the activits and communities can easily found as heavy daily e-mail discussions are common. Many public documents are illegally scanned & post in softcopy on the web & mailing lists.