How far do you consider that Internet has revolutionized the way in which people communicate? In your answer refer to one area of activity such as industry, health or politics.

`

When American pre-Vice President Gore introduced the idea of an "information superhighway" in a speech in 1992, (Margetts, 1999, p.1), the oncoming radical change urged by the Internet had not been realized by then. Soon it was flourishing in mid 1990s. Computer-mediated communication via the Internet such as WWW, Email, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), CU-SeeMe video conferencing, broadband network, and other tools could facilitate many-to-many communications and rewrite the conditions of participation. Thus it established a cyberspace for communication. According to Holmes, Cyberspace is “sometimes interchangeably with virtual reality, cyberspace specifically denote the real and imagined space in which individuals meet in electronically mediated and simulated space. A single person does not exist in cyberspace, but in virtual reality”(1999, p.234). It has been widely believed that the cyberspace might initiate a revolutionary change in the way humans conduct a more interactive communication.

This essay is attempting to evaluate how far the Internet has revolutionized the way humans communicate with reference to politics. In this essay, politics will be discussed with its two basic components: the government and the citizen. Hence in the first part, how Internet influence the way in government communicate will be observed. The observations focus in particular on electronic-government and electronic election. In the second part, how the Internet changes the way individuals participate politics will be examined. Finally, this essay will cautiously evaluate to what extent the Internet has its own limits on political communications.

 In the first place, as writer Toffler claimed “technological innovation will bring the end of government where power has shifted away from the old hierarchs. Creating a far more fluid, confusing system, with continually shifting centers of power” (cited in Margetts, 1999, p.2), it does imply the old political culture of holding meetings, getting people to come to meetings, traveling distances to and from meetings, surveying data, collecting information, advocating policies, electing new government, and other types of political activities, is going to decline. A new culture of online political activities was born, and this may replace the old culture. Politicians are enthusiastic advocators of technical innovations. For example, in the US, Gore proclaimed “ we are determined to move from industrial age government to information age government”. Correspondingly, Blair also emphasized of “ the government that promises in almost every breath to modernize Britain”(cited in Margetts, 1999, p.2). Thus, large-scale use of ICTs (Information and Communication Technology) via Internet has been adopted in governments, it is “ enabling the support of an information and knowledge creating and sharing organizational culture”(Milner, 1999,P.68). For example, in the US, by the mid-1990s over 100 separate federal government networks were linked up to the Internet and wide-range government publications were available on-line, including the 1996 federal budget documents. (Margetts, 1999, p.4).  The Internet has been shown to play an increasingly role in government, the expectations to more efficient and democratic politics tend to be raised. In this part, two focuses, electronic government (E-government) and electronic-election as two important components to conduct governance will be observed as examples.

Firstly, State and local governments in cyberspace, they are highly interested in facilitating and advocating E-government to embrace the modernization. (Margolis&Resnick, 2000, p.93). According to Milner, “E-government is fundamentally linked to the achievement of the re-engineering of public services in alignment with the twin goals of leveraging both efficiency and effectiveness whilst increasing citizen satisfaction” (1999, p.63). E-government may also be defined as “delivery of government services and information to the public using electronic means”. There are three main principles of e-Governance: improving government process (e- administration); connecting citizens (e-citizen and e-services); and building external interactions (Kumar et al, 2000). The E-government will truly allow citizens to participate in the government decision-making process, reflect their true needs and welfare by using E-government as a tool.