To begin with, let's clarify the term "Infopistas" or "Infovías" which, following the current terminology used for road traffic, fast, at times free and always very practical, could be the best term to define in Spanish that which the anglosaxons have already dubbed "Highway of Information" and the French have just called recently "Inforoute".
This having been said, let it suffice to add that the most popular of all the infovías, the Internet, is nothing less than an INTERnational NETwork of autovías to transport and drive all kinds of information, from and to any point of the planet, at high speed, with a guaranteed reception, at an increasingly low cost and in many case practically free, through the use of the electronic systems of communication provided by the computers.
One of these infovías in existence for some twenty years and whose origins and promising future I was describing in an article published in the Spanish newspaper "El País" on May 3rd 1994, entitled "The Highway of Information", has experimented an exponential growth and a spectacular popularity over the last six months, from the moment it made possible the transmission of and the access to texts, images, videos and sound, using the WWW system (World Wide Web) or world information net.
Already extremely popular and with a future that will provide us with unexpected and inconceivable surprises, on a short term, the Web is the easiest and simplest way of connecting oneself from one location of the planet to the other, within a few seconds, and access hundreds of thousands of data base or pages in hypertext (Http), a technology recently invented and developed by CERN in Geneva. In less than a year it has already revolutionized the world communications system and somehow, many of the ways and modes in the working place, at all levels and in every sphere of the human activity.
Its importance was stressed in the statement issued by Le Monde Diplomatique in its June issue when it referred to Internet as the media of the years 2000 and predicted that it will have an "irreversible development by providing its millions of users with the experience and the conscience of a global, cultural, economic and social impact, surpassing the until now classical media and offering increasingly lower costs and an ever richer range of services".
We must add that all this is taking place at speeds unknown until now, in the already vertiginous exponential spiral with which technologies of information are presently developing. It is almost common place to say that "two months in Internet is equivalent to twelve months in the Gregorian calendar".
The recent decision by Telefónica de España to provide seven million homes at the end of this year with the possibility of connecting themselves to Internet, which has just opened to the business world, is one of the best signs that we Spanish are entering, at once and without delay, in that which truly is one of the greatest accomplishments of the third millenium: to be able to communicate, without barriers, with great speed and in an economically and technologically accesible way.
We are witnessing therefore an authentic Infovía, widely used, with an enormously promising horizon which has revolutionized in a record time of a few months the work place and, of course.... even some of the traditional modes of action of Spanish diplomacy, only over the past three or four months, precisely in view of the challenge the so-called "turbot war" carried out by Canada against the European Union.
And to set an example, here is mine. Motivated by the visit in May 1994 of the Spanish Minister of Industry, Juan Manuel Eguiagaray, at the Embassy of Spain in Ottawa, we finalized preparations to give the Minister a presentation of the participation of our Embassy in a free electronic information system, the National Capital Freenet , in the City of Ottawa and the region of the Canadian federal capital with a direct access to and from Internet. This then allowed us to introduce our database "Sí, Spain", which we built in the course of one full year at our Chancery, at the disposition of the whole world, through a simple Telnet to NCF.
With the pioneer development of telecommunications in Canada, the introduction of the Web and of the hypertext technologies made us ponder on the possibility of using it, as a means to spread Spanish information in the face of the tendentious Canadian disinformation, during the most critical moments of the conflict brought about by the Ottawa government during the fisheries confrontation in international waters off the North Atlantic Grand Banks.
The result was equally spectacular.
Five days after the seizure of the Estai in St. John's, Newfoundland, in its page "Sí, Spain" in hypertext that reproduced the existing database in NCF, the Embassy introduced a special section dealing with "Fisheries" which, among other factors, provided us, until now, with an access of over 150.000 users of our program of information and documentation, from more than 65 countries and, although it may seem contradictory, with the designation as one of the best Web Cultural sites in Canada, next to TV-Montreal, the Grands Ballets Canadiens, the Virtual Bookstores and the official Canadian T.V. station CBC.
Besides being the first Embassy in the world to have introduced its own info-page in Internet from Washington DC as well as from Ottawa-the British are doing it, and the Embassies of Australia, Canada, Israel and France stationed in Washington DC have just joined the system-, this prompted us to offer and render an international service of information on Spain that is so up-to-date that users can read the Catalan press, Avui, El Periódico de Catalunya, La Vanguardia or El Diario Vasco, in some cases especially from this hemisphere, six hours before the average Spanish citizen has the newspaper at hand.
Going back to the usefulness of Web in the external action of the State, our being part of Internet further allowed us, in the face of the lies and falsities spread in the Canadian traditional media, which is difficult to access, to set forth our legal and environmental thesis and in the face of the deformations of information contained in the Web page of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Embassy included a whole list of facts, photographic documents, clarifications, opinions and official positions of the Spanish government, available to the world in general, simply by accessing our page: http://www.DocuWeb.ca/SiSpain and enter in one of the 15 sections, the one relating to "Fisheries". This you can do now if you have a computer, a modem and a connection to Internet.
Do it and you will be in a position to verify, in practice, the advantages of Web in Internet, which undoubtedly is becoming the media by antonomasia of the third millenium, as an insuperable "autovía" of communication and spreading of information, which is undoubtedly the first pillar of diplomacy, in order to subsequently negotiate and in any case represent, which still constitute the tripod of the traditional diplomatic career and activity.