In China, for example, the number of regular Internet users, currently nearly 20 million, is doubling every six months. According to the International Telecommunications Union, fewer than two in ten thousand Cambodians and Vietnamese use the Internet, while nearly 3,000 out of every 10,000 Singaporeans do so. Even more sobering is the fact that of the more than 300 million people connected to the Web in the world today, only 3.2 million, or less than 1 percent, are in Southeast Asia. Generational and cultural gap exists even in industrialised countries like Japan. For example, some sociologists argue that Japan is facing a serious problem, that is the incompatibility of Japan's management philosophy and the Internet philosophy.
Japanese management emphasizes integral processes while the Internet philosophy values autonomy.
This is even more difficult in a country like India with 18 officially recognised languages. For Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, the agreement allows the three tranches of theirs to take effect five years later respectively. However, access is only one piece of the Digital Divide, argue some researchers. Even if everyone had Internet access, we would still have to conquer illiteracy in order to bridge the divide. In order to be included in the digital age, a significant part of the population in Asia should make a giant leap from basic literacy skills to cyber fluency .