4. The data: "The emergence of Asian Studies online" The final result of all these operations is Table 1. The table charting "The emergence of Asian Studies online and related electronic events, 1944-2003" places data in five columns. The table is, in fact, a map of the past events, with each column of facts providing a context for the events listed in the other four columns.

The first of the columns, entitled the "Year", establishes a basic chronological axis which starts nearly 60 years ago and unfolds until today. The second column, "Hardware/ Software/ Networks/ Users", enumerates the key technological and demographic developments. The third column, "Global Intellectual Infrastructure", catalogues those events, meetings and services which benefited and aided the scholarly electronic and networked world as a whole. To put it differently, the third column deals with our intellectual heritage. That heritage comprises not only informational resources, but also the growing body of commonly held standards and guidelines, as well as the rules of online etiquette and "savoir-vivre." The fourth column, "Computerised Social Sciences/ Humanities" lists key electronic and networked events in those scholarly disciplines which remain separate from Asian Studies. Information about the latter discipline is dealt with in the last column, the "Computerised Asian Studies."

Table 1: The emergence of Asian Studies online and related electronic events, 1944-2003.