In the brief years of its existence, the Internet has created a new world civilization. The Web has done precious little, however, to civilize the world.

Never before in human history has it been so simple to broadcast so powerful a message of hate to so many people at once.

Whether the broadcaster is a second-generation skinhead, a pro-violence clergyman, or simply an armchair racist with an itch to incite, the technology is in place, the audience limitless, the message, all too often, vile.

A newly infinite capacity for communication between people, it appears, need not foster a capacity for understanding. In fact, the opposite may be the rule.

This has been particularly evident in the Middle East. In a region where a family telephone was until recently a luxury in many areas, technology has leapfrogged households from the 19th Century into the 21st, with satellite television and the World Wide Web now available even to many people in remote and, until now, timelessly traditional areas.

For the first time ever, Arabs and Jews separated for decades by insurmountable barriers now have the unique opportunity to communicate with one another. In theory, they now have the means to make their feelings, their pain, their humanity known to one another. In theory, the virtual no man's land of cyberspace affords a unique chance for common ground.

But no. If anything, the Internet has become a powerful new weapon, widening to the ends of the earth the dimensions of the battleground in the Middle East conflict, exacerbating tensions and sparking new bloodshed with incendiary footage of atrocities real and doctored.

On a day-to-day basis, the battle is joined with gladitorial abandon, fervor, and bloodletting in the arena of the Talkback.

More's the pity, since it is in the forum of the Talkback, more than anywhere, that a meeting of well-intentioned hearts and minds could truly take place.

In practice, Talkback forums have all too often served to provide a platform for the bully, the snide verbal abuser, the lockstep ideologue with no tolerance for the opinions of others.

The reader sincerely interested in communicating with the other side may well refrain from responding, repulsed by the crude remarks of respondents who have found in Talkbacks a satisfyingly larger potential audience than they would have, had they scrawled the same thoughts on the side wall of a public toilet.

With this in mind, this space will be mounting an experiment on Monday, an attempt to encourage candid and respectful discussion between people on either side of the many divides our readership straddles, between Jews and Muslims, Arabs and Israelis, Christians and others who strongly support Zionism and Christians and others who strongly support the Palestinian cause.

The responses will be subjected to stringent guidelines governing the tone of discourse. We invite our readers to use the Talkback feature for the present article in order to suggest what those guidelines should entail, and to comment on the concept as a whole.