ALTHOUGH it may not be immediately obvious to anyone who does not regularly log on to the Internet, the global computer system is at present in the flux of vicious war.
Across the electronic frontier, there are a dozen digital battles in full cry. Civil and electronic liberties groups are constantly fighting with the federal government in the United States, while minor skirmishes are being fought for freedom of access to the Internet as far apart as Munich, Delhi and Beijing.
Elsewhere, there are battles to develop new Internet software, new services, new information products, all using the Net in ever more complex ways, all scratching and gauging to become the first to "make a killing" on the Net.
Of all the battles, however, perhaps the most fascinating for Ireland is the battle to become the official face of the nation on the electronic frontier, to become a sort of digital light for the diaspora. The latest push in this offensive comes from PaddyNet.
The Dublin based Internet service has been in action since last St Patrick's Day, but tomorrow will see it officially launched. To commemorate the occasion, the people behind PaddyNet have created Digital Island, an impressively comprehensive multimedia digital event, a kind of Net fleadh mor.
Working with the facilities of Arthouse, in Dublin's Temple Bar, the Electronic Cafe in Paris and the Knitting Factory in New York, PaddyNet plans to encourage people to link up, by various electronic means - including video conferencing and "digital postcards" - with the "70 million Irish people around the world".
The highlight of the event, however, is the re formation of the Hothouse Flowers. The band will play a special gig in Arthouse's ISDN equipped studio. For the concert, they will be joined live by ISDN from Paris by Cooney and Begley and Sharon Shannon, and from New York by Mairtin O'Connor, Davy Spillane and musicians from the Riverdance show.
And this is when things will begin to get complicated. The electronic session will be mixed at Arthouse, and then sent across the Atlantic (using ISDN lines and something called a Telos Box) to a World Wide Web server in Seattle, which will in turn make the finished musical product available through the Web (using a technology called Streamworks Audio). This process, the organisers estimate, may take up to 40 milliseconds.
But of course, if all that sounds like too much bother, you can always watch the St Patrick's Day parade on RTE.