Resumen
The article focuses on the concept of digital cities. The concept of digital cities is to build an arena in which people in regional communities can interact and share knowledge, experiences and mutual interests. Digital cities integrate urban information, both achievable and real time and create public spaces in the Internet for people living/visiting these cities. Digital cities are being developed all over the world. The Internet has triggered global businesses, but at the same time enabled human beings to create rich information spaces for everyday life. While the Internet makes research and businesses global, life is inherently local. Business requires homogeneity to allow global competition, while life is heterogeneous reflecting the different cultural backgrounds. Business applications require standard protocols to overcome differences, but any standard for human life is not needed. If there are differences, cross-cultural communications need to be supported. The rapid advance of the Internet technologies makes any prediction rather suspect.