Since its inception in 2003, the Australian Journal for Emerging Technologies and Society (AJETS) has published articles on the social aspects of emerging technologies. Committed to an interdisciplinary approach, our authors have come from fields as diverse as psychology, law, history and sociology. Our topics have ranged from biotechnologies to communications technologies to games and beyond.

With this issue we are relaunching AJETS as the International Journal for Emerging Technologies and Society (iJETS), broadening its focus to enable the publication of international research on emerging technologies and society. Internationalising the journal is also designed to reflect the global nature of many of our areas of interest, as emerging technologies seldom recognize national boundaries.

This first issue of the iJETS focuses on life online. Three of the articles examine different aspects of Internet dating. In his article, Robert Reynolds reflects on the world of gay online dating and his ambivalence about it, and Millsom Henry-Waring and Jo Barraket report on their study of users of Internet dating sites, suggesting that meeting in this way involves what they term hypercommunication. Komalsingh Rambaree's article looks at Mauritian youth and their views about meeting online. The combination of articles provides insight into how the Internet is facilitating romance. The final article, by Mary-Helen Ward and Sandra West, looks at a different aspect of the Internet: blogging in PhD study