P   R   O   J   E   C   T     B   O   S   N   I   A

USING THE INTERNET AS A CIVIC TOOL














A Collaboration between
Chicago-Kent College of Law and
Villanova University School of Law


WWW.PROJECT-BOSNIA.ORG

Building a Cyber Bridge to Peace

By: Cindy Baker and Harry "IV" Ashton

A new advertisement by a major telecommunications company compares the Internet to Utopia. Through the Internet, the ad claims racial, ethnic, gender and physical differences are obliterated. It doesn't matter if you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, black, white, male, female, deaf, blind or paralyzed—those twisted fiber optic cables can't see and don't care.

The ad may overstate the power of the World Wide Web, but the information superhighway can cut across boundaries and barriers. In an increasingly interdependent world, instant access to information can make the difference between security or peril, growth or collapse, war or peace, and understanding rather than ignorance. The Internet then becomes a positive instrument bringing disparate people together for a common good.

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