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With the advent of increasingly sophisticated means of communication via the Internet including email, it would make sense that feminist-centered human rights groups take advantage of cyberspace as a means of spreading awareness of various issues on a global scale. At the same time issues of safety and privacy are of concern as the world becomes more dependent on technology.

The late 20th Century has seen a tremendous surge in technological inventions. The Internet has transformed the lives of thousands on a global scale, with email capabilities that connect people thousands of miles apart in an instant. Through this medium of cyberspace community, people who are physically apart because of distance can meet via the Internet and almost instantly share ideas. For diasporic peoples, cyberspace creates a community through technology and creating more awareness of the fluidity of cultures from their homes of origin. The sense of static stagnation is dispelled, connecting expatriates with those "back home" in a more meaningful way. To some, this view of a virtual community through technology continues to create imagined homelands such as an imagined "India"(Gajjala, 1996). For others, it opens a window onto what is currently happening "over there" in terms of politics, economics and popular culture.

The relatively new field of cyberfeminism's theoretical roots takes its cue from Donna Haraway, French third wave feminism, and poststructuralism. Haraway seeks to connect feminism with modern technology, and how reliance on and use of cyberspace closes the gap between science and social reality. To her, this means "both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relations, science fiction (Haraway, 1985)." A quartet of young Australian women who call themselves VNS Matrix created a "cyberfeminist manifesto": an unabashedly bold mix of art, French feminist theory and the writings of Donna Haraway. The Internet is their playground, and they enthusiastically embrace the new techno-culture-digital media outlet compatible for their brand of cyberactivism.

While Haraway, Stone and Plant strive to form a theoretical framework for cyberfeminism, many young techno-savvy feminists see little use for theories that seem non-connected with the lived reality of what women and girls are experiencing vis-à-vis a liberating techno-culture. They see "mainstream cyberfeminism [as] nothing more than quaint essentialist rant (Francesca da Rimini, VNS Matrix)," remnants of '70's Western feminism that is now outdated, restrictive, constrictive and too politically correct. Rosi Braidotti in "Cyberfeminism with a Difference" equates the looking back at history as "nostalgia", arguing that "[the nostalgic longing for an allegedly better past is a hasty and unintelligent response to the challenges of our age (Braidotti, 1998:2)."

However, Faith Wilding argues that in rejecting traditional feminism and its history of struggle, cyberfeminists may be less able to incorporate issues of difference across "generations, economic, educational, racial, national and cultural boundaries (Wilding, 1998). Communicating across cyberspace would not diminish nor eliminate the above concerns, so cyberfeminists need to be prepared to negotiate difference through Internet coalitions and alliances with other like-minded men and women. In a world dominated by technology, the immediate past becomes obsolete and irrelevant in the minds of many, and the lessons learned from that past would have to be re-learned.

Cyberspace allows for a wider range of expression and enables an encompassing of a variety of layers. In other words, one can be an activist, a theorist, an artist and a cyberpunk all in one, as evidenced in such e-zines as gURL and Geekgirl (Galloway, 1998). It also encompasses educational institutions as well as institutions of industrial design, both which still are bastions of the "Old Boy Network", so that cyberfeminism transforms these gendered areas into a more neutral, safe space (Wilding, 1998).

Cyberspace e-media offers a more impersonal space because one is not physically seen; age, race or economic position is unknown and "refuses a fixed subject position (Wilding, 1998)." It also has given rise to a greater degree of viciousness in rude, hurtful verbal behaviour that would otherwise be unacceptable. The Internet affords anonymity in a way a real community cannot. Sexist and racist attitudes and opinions are easier to convey due to the state of relative anonymity cyberspace affords. There is less control of what one posts on-line and how those posts are being interpreted (Gajjala, 1996). Mis-interpretation is quite easy due to the inability of the poster and the reader to use and read non-verbal expressions that would add emphasis or ease the sting in a comment through email posts.

On many of the diverse listservs that pepper cyberspace, the percentage of those who are known as "lurkers" seems greater than those who contribute online to whatever discussion is occurring at the time. Perhaps the main reason many choose to remain "lurkers" - interested yet perpetually silent online observers - is precisely because of the tendency for some contributors to viciously attack those who disagree with their particular line of reasoning or stated opinion. John Katz recounts in an article in Slashdot how the hostility of some posters has created an "enormous disparity between huge numbers of Lurkers and small numbers of public posters, skew[ing] agendas, distort[ing] arguments, and worst of all, driv[ing] away countless potential contributors" While diasporic peoples are able to connect with the lands of their birth or origin through email and e-media, activist groups and organizations are also taking advantage of technology and turning cyberspace into "theatres of confrontation" (Lovink, 1998). People are dependent on technology more than ever, and it is imperative that feminists join cyberspace to produce technology that will improve the lives of those on the margins and disenfranchised.

Of growing concern for human rights activists and development workers is the continued disparity between the percentage of those who have access to cyberspace and those who do not. The Panos Institute wrote in response to the World Development Report that it felt the Report did not fully recognize the relationships between knowledge and power. . .[nor] sufficiently differentiate between knowledge and information [or] pay sufficient attention to the capacity of people to adapt, assess, evaluate, interpret, and challenge the use of knowledge available to them. . .[nor] sufficiently discuss the diversity and energy of civil society and the capacity for people, and especially the poor, to have their voices heard.

Many development workers within governmental organizations like the World Bank or CARE are realizing the irrelevance of cyberspace technology for those in non-industrialized nations where many of the people are without electricity, telephones, safe water. With the rapid globalization of trade, finance, and information flows and the resulting increase in competition, less industrialized countries are in danger of falling further behind, impeding the "efficient functioning of markets and . . challenging the ability of governments to deal with some of the problems [because of] information failure or corruption (Dahlman)."

Improving technology in economically challenged areas of the world does not necessarily guarantee dissemination of relevant information helpful to the peoples of those areas, particularly if the cultural aspects are not taken into consideration. Too often in the past, development policies have been formulated that ignored the voices of the peoples purported to needing the assistance. The patronizing attitudes towards the peoples of so-named "third world" countries have also hindered open dialoguing, and the result has been the silencing of voices crucial to making a development project be successful.

This is true for cyberfeminists either from the West or non-Western feminists who have had a Western-centered education. Radhika Gajjala argues that "while the relation between feminism and 'Indianness' (or 'South Asianness' etcetera) is a problem, so is the relation between Western feminism and non-Western women's issues. But being non-Western would not necessarily mean an automatic solidarity with those women she may regard as socially and materially inferior. She may "resist" the tendency to see "third world" women as an oppressed and deprived monolith, but she may have more access to "material and cultural capital than some Western women (Gajjala, p.5)." And Chinese American playwright David Henry Hwang asks: "who is the 'real' Asian? Does it matter?

Addressing such questions forces us to confront an issue many of us have sidestepped: class (Hwang, 1994: xi)." It is this tendency to often sidestep this very issue even within progressive cyberspace discourses that hinders a forming of a completely neutral space.

With the advent of new listservs out of the so-called "third world" such as Nepal-based "Bol!" and South African-based "GENNETT", cyberfeminism helps in spreading awareness with regard to female consciousness-raising and empowerment as well as linking voices of the poor and disenfranchised to the centres of wealth. For example, Margaret Grieco of the Organisation and Development Management Business School, University of North London, uses three-minute video clips at national and international meetings to "humanis[e] the distribution of resources. [To learn] what Africa's female farmers say about extension agents who are male and the consequences for their household food security. Linking the voices of the poor to the centres of wealth and creating transparency about the circumstances of the poor are vital steps to self-empowerment. (Grieco, "Technologies to give 'voice'")

For better or for worse, technology is a part of "our" culture. Through the use of cyberspace technology, it enables women in grass-roots movements to effectively disseminate information on a global scale. This not only provides information to those in other countries, but it also spreads awareness of ongoing development projects, actions being taken against human rights abuses, new laws being implemented or challenged, and a way for activists to network and share ideas and engage in lively discourse.

With access to the Internet and email lists becoming more commonplace, questions of safety and privacy are inevitable. There is much ongoing debate as to just how private are "private" mailing lists, and just how "public" such spaces should be. For feminist ethnographers and theorists, the question of whether an email list is private or public space and its implications are very important in their work (Gajjala, 1996; Haraway, 1985; Wilding, 1998; Arnold, 1996; Balsamo, 1997; Stone, 1991; Braidotti, 1996; Galloway, 1998). Perhaps because one feels vulnerable when one posts to a list - despite the physical anonymity - there is a sense of security in knowing that a certain list has been deemed "private"; but when that perceived security is breached, it is as though one's private letters were put on public display for all to read and critique.

On-line activist groups also have to contend with the question of how "safe" is the Internet. For example, an NGO that concentrates on eradicating sex trafficking of young girls worldwide has had to change email addresses several times to avoid harassing and at times, threatening messages sent by posters hostile to their work. In this case, their email address is available on their website, which is well known the world over. Restricting access to their website to discourage hostile "raiders" would be detrimental to their work. In another example, a listserv that declares itself a women-only list has had strange postings from time to time which has led some members to suspect that perhaps a man or men have accessed the list.

As we become more technology-dependent, issues such as these will become more difficult to resolve. The era of the cyborg - human and machine blended - is becoming a reality (Haraway). The boundary that separates technology and nature will no longer be distinguishable. Blade Runner and 2001: Space Odyssey are upon us. This will lead to an inevitable separation of class on all levels: economic, political, and cultural. The have's will continue to "have" while the have-not's will desperately try to play catch up. The world as envisioned by cyberspace theorists portrays a cold and sterile place where a look into the past is seen as unhealthy nostalgic indulgence, and the future stretches out bleakly and endlessly. The line between human and machine may become increasingly blurred as the world comes to depend more and more on technology.

Despite the theoretical musings of cyber-academics who see a world operated by and dependent on machines and rigid adherence to time (Adam, 1998), and with isolated pockets of people rarely emerging to inter-relate in the flesh, I see a cyber world that will continue to encompass the warmth of human contact through lively, stimulating discourse. Elizabeth Lane Lawley argues that "if we reshape our view of the process to see the user of technology as a subject, rather than the object, we provide an avenue for women to act as agents of change. ..(Lawley, 1998)."

I see this happening already in the various listgroups and forums that are constantly being formed on the Internet. Everyday, a new listgroup announces itself and invites interested persons to subscribe and contribute their ideas and experiences. A sense of global community is generated, and while physical miles may separate people, there is a closeness that can be achieved through cyberspace contacts.