Living in two different worlds at the same time<\/p>\n
By Zatni Arbi<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): \"If I can use this program, anybody can,\" said
\nWerner Sutanto. He must have been trying to sound humble. As
\nIntel's country manager for Indonesia, this amicable man is more
\ncomputer-proficient than the vast majority of us.<\/p>\n
We were sitting in a conference room in the plush Ritz
\nCarlton, Jimbaran, Bali. Also there were Intel's country managers
\nfor Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, along with
\na group of local journalists from Bali.<\/p>\n
We sat there, feeling so comfortable, so safe, so protected
\nand so remote from Sambas, Kalimantan, where the killings had
\nbeen going on for several weeks.<\/p>\n
Werner was giving a short presentation on InterMerchant, a
\nsoftware program that would enable small entrepreneurs to make
\ntheir presence on the Web. No, this did not mean that the chip
\ngiant had decided to enter the software industry. It just got
\nitself involved in developing tools that would take the use of
\ncomputer technology and the Internet a step further and higher.
\nOf course, as more and more people use the Internet and PCs,
\nIntel Corp. will be able to churn out more processors.<\/p>\n
Intel, as Werner explained at the informal media meeting, is
\nin the process of providing the software to Internet Service
\nProviders (ISPs) in a pilot project that it is executing in
\nJakarta, Yogyakarta, Surabaya and Bali. The project is aimed at
\nhelping local small businesses get their feet wet in the e-
\ncommerce water. \"Several universities have expressed their
\ninterest in providing the necessary training for the small-scale
\nentrepreneurs,\" added Werner.<\/p>\n
Once the program becomes available on the ISPs' servers, small
\nentrepreneurs can start utilizing them to create their own
\nstorefronts on the Web. They can start offering their goods --
\nbatik shirts, handicrafts, durian and any other exotic products
\n-- and have a potentially global audience.<\/p>\n
It's that easy, and Werner was not bluffing.<\/p>\n
In fact, the number of small businesses with presence on the
\nWeb is increasing very rapidly. The low cost involved, and the
\npromise of worldwide exposure are getting harder and harder to
\nresist.<\/p>\n
Take www.iklanbaris.co.id, for example. The page I captured
\nfor this article contains announcements of small business
\nopportunities. You can place your ad in the site, and suddenly
\nyou are ready for business. In the beginning, the number of
\nvisitors to your site may be limited, but over time it will grow
\n-- depending, of course, on what you offer and how often you
\nrefresh your pages.<\/p>\n
Indeed, it would be difficult to deny claims made by Oracle,
\nCisco and others that \"Internet has changed our lives\". In my own
\ncase, I could lo longer imagine my life without access to
\nInternet and e-mail. Just last week, for example, before I left
\nfor Denmark, I e-mailed a Danish friend who is now living in
\nAugsburg, Germany. I asked him what kind of clothes I should take
\nwith me for the trip, and in just two hours I got his very useful
\nadvice. It never costs me much to get in touch with him, or with
\nso many other friends and colleagues all over the world thanks to
\nthe Internet and e-mail.<\/p>\n
That is the glorious picture of the digital life. It's
\nborderless, it's so fast and so egalitarian. On the Net, the sky
\nis the limit. Unfortunately, there also is a different kind of
\npicture that you can find being forwarded from one Internet
\nuser's inbox to another. One is the picture of a young man
\nholding the severed head of another man by the hair. Sadly, both
\nthe young man in the JPG image file and the man whose head he was
\ncarrying were also my countrymen.<\/p>\n
So while some of us have already moved into the exciting world
\nof digital communications and are continuously talking about
\nefficiency, productivity, global reach, collaborative works and
\nthe future, many of our fellow Indonesians are still living in
\nthe era of the savages, the barbaric, the cannibals. Could there
\never be more disparate worlds than these? Keep in mind that both
\nof us live in the same homeland.<\/p>\n
And then, think about why we were all forced to avoid the
\nSemanggi and Senayan areas in Jakarta on April 1? It was not
\nbecause it was April Fools Day. It was because a bunch of our
\ncountrymen were stoning passing cars as they walked toward the
\nSenayan Sport Complex to watch the Indonesian Soccer League
\nmatches. It was easy to see that these soccer supporters and
\ntheir victims did not know each other, but it was extremely
\ndifficult to understand why the former did what they did to the
\nlatter. Except, perhaps, by labeling the action a manifestation
\nof social jealousy.<\/p>\n
Think also about the guy in the Senen railway station who,
\nlive in front of a TV camera, threatened to destroy everything
\naround him if he and his gang were not given the money they
\nneeded to go back to Central and East Java. As his friends
\ncheered, we were stunned. What right did they have to demand
\nmoney from us? Can we fight back and defend ourselves?<\/p>\n
Here in Indonesia, we are currently experiencing two
\ncontrasting realities at the same time. Inside the office
\nbuilding, or the conference rooms of five-star hotels, or the
\nguarded houses in upscale real estates, we feel safe and we can
\ngo on-line where everybody ignores differences in race, religion
\nand skin color. Once we get on the street, however, it is once
\nagain the issue of survival in its most basic sense.<\/p>\n
The question now, folks, is: \"How long can we go on living
\nthese two extremely divergent worlds without eventually becoming
\nschizophrenic?\"<\/p>",
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