The world is experiencing a major technological revolution and there is a new economy unleashing productivity and creating prosperity, but in a very uneven pattern. Knowledge and information are the keys to productivity and connectivity is the key to global competitiveness. Development in the information society is, above all, the development of capacity to process knowledge-based information efficiently and to apply it to production and to the enhancement of the quality of life. Under the informational paradigm, two key factors of production are necessary, namely information processing and communication infrastructure, and human resources equipped to use it. The Internet is the most direct and fundamental expression of both infrastructure and human resources and the new economy is therefore essentially mind-based (Castells, in Muller, Cloete & Badat, 2001: 159). The key to using the Internet for developmental purposes is people&