It is well known that information and communication technologies have permeated all corners of the world. Images of farmers in Bangladesh or members of a native tribe in Africa wielding mobile phones have become common place. Moreover, the Internet has continued to penetrate deeper and deeper into the everyday world of ordinary people, so much so that it is fast becoming an ubiquitous medium present in different cultural contexts. In this issue, we have invited researchers and scholars to investigate ethical issues that arise from the interplay arising from this very fact.

An inevitable result of the global penetration of the Internet and the mobile phone (in fact the two technologies are fast merging into one device only) is that presuppositions of the world's cultures could clash with those accompanying these technologies. This has given rise to an emerging field called "intercultural information ethics," where the cultural presuppositions of the world's cultures are seen as an important factor in consideration of ethical theorization and the search for ethical guidelines.

In fact intercultural information ethics has been with us for quite some time, thanks to the works pioneered by Rafael Capurro, Charles Ess, Makoto Nakada, Lü Yao-Huai, and others. IRIE has addressed the subject for the first time in 2004 with its second issue publishing the proceedings of the International ICIE Symposium 'Localizing the Internet'.

As the technologies are developing fast, and as the world is changing rapidly, there is a need to look further at intercultural information ethics, both in theoretical formulation as well as in how the cultures respond to the technologies. How does it affect people's relationships, customs, their language and every day's beliefs? And vice versa: do these have (different) effects on the net and its development.

In terms of theory, many questions still remain: How are we to come to terms with the age-old philosophical problem of universalism and particu-larism? In other words, are values embedded in the use of information and communication technologies culture specific or are they universal? Or are there some values that are specific to time, place and culture, and are there some others that are more universal? Does the term 'universal' admit of degree, so that one can be more 'universal' than another?

As the various parts of the world are undoubtedly being bound together more tightly, one part can certainly learn from others. Thus we are happy that we can present in this issue papers from different countries on different continents, some of them co-authored across different cultural backgrounds.

Yours sincerely,

the editors.