The Information Age dawns, championed by President Assad_s son.

Thrice weekly, the 32-year-old Syrian businessman O. Ali taps into a Beirut-based Internet service provider to check his e-mail and surf the Net. Ali and his cyber-savvy friends have an unlikely ally in their bid to modernize Syria: Col. Bashar Hafez al-Assad, the 34-year-old son and unofficial successor of the republic_s president. Bashar, who was thrust into the role of heir apparent when his older brother, Basil, was killed in a 1994 car accident, has begun promoting his pet causes, computers and the Internet. Outwardly at least, the dawn of the Information Age has produced little real change in Syria. The government is still dominated by President Assad, who was re-elected to a fifth consecutive seven-year term in February. The long-ruling Baath party faces no real political opposition, and there is no independent press. But the regime_s stranglehold on information has begun to crack. Four years ago, fax machines were still banned. Then satellite TV dishes began to sprout (illegally) on the rooftops of wealthy Damascenes. Today, tens of thousands of households can tune in to MTV and Sky News as well as to a host of (non-Syrian) Arabic-language programs. The state-owned telecommunications company recently started taking applications for e-mail accounts after officials realized that hundreds of people had signed up with foreign-based Internet service providers.