Universities provide both rational justification and social authentication as a basis for knowledge. By contrast, there is a lot of information on the World Wide Web, but it is far from clear how much of it constitutes knowledge. Research, scholarship and the creative arts produce and organize information, and teaching transmits it. To teaching we add learning, understood in an active dimension, because a university-trained person must be an active participant in the processing and interpreting of information. Information is also collected and made available through such facilities as publications, databases, and libraries.
Information technology goes beyond computers.
And unlike the old bricks and mortar, information technology does not build walls, it breaks them down. The World Wide Web opens the Indiana University to the world, and the world to Indiana University. It also connects each campus to the community that surrounds it. This does not mean that information technology will replace the old bricks and mortar. At least in the foreseeable future the University still needs well-maintained buildings, and if anything we need more of them to house the space needs generated by information technology.