ABSTRACT
For the reasons set out in Chapter 3, the role of intermediaries lies at the very heart of the new paradigm that this book is seeking to articulate. In Chapters 4 and 5 we examined cases where Internet intermediation could take place indirectly via the distance-shrinking effects of radios and (public) telephones in the rural areas of developing countries. What we have not yet considered, however, is the range of possibilities that arise in the absence of these mass-communication technologies. It is our goal in this chapter, accordingly, to fill in one example of the remaining category of mechanisms through which the Internet can be brought to rural areas by intermediaries of one kind or another (though, by no means, do we attempt a survey of the very large number of possible cases).1 The following chapter then deals with another, somewhat different project.
