You can't easily avoid reading about and hearing about the Internet. It's everywhere and everyone's there, or so we are led to believe. It's confusing, we're told, and it's growing rapidly, and you'd better get on-board or you'll be left behind. Using the Internet won't make you good or virtuous or clever. But it seems to me that everyone needs to investigate it, and there are especially good reasons for educators to consider doing so.
Computers are pretty cold instruments.
What warms them up are the human connections that they help to mediate. E-mail is no longer either hard to do or difficult to find. The growing FreeNet movement, the proliferation of commercial Internet providers, and the expansion of educational computing all mean that if you want Internet access, you can find it. Much of my e-mail is personal, and I expect the friends with whom I correspond to be civil and to entertain me with their writings. Listservs are groups of individuals who share a similar interest, be it goldfish, organic gardening, women's spirituality, Greece, or the philosophy of education.