4. New business practices and new players

To analyze and comment on new practices and describe new needs in a comprehensive way, we need to go beyond the documentary vision presented above. We need to take the Internet phenomenon into account. We need to move beyond the perimeter of the company and a purely "business" vision of IT techniques, to consider the use of these same techniques with a vision that is both individualized and of the mass of globalized exchanges. We need to involve a new player in the economic and social spheres: the Internet user. The Internet user is the citizen-consumer. He or she uses the Internet to buy consumer goods and leisure products, contact government agencies, consult information databases, and so on.

For this reason, we approach this section on new needs and practices from two angles: that of the company and that of the web user.