We went into teaching, in part, because we understood and liked the classic teacher-student relationship. It rewarded us as students, and it rewards us now as teachers. Many of our offline colleagues, from whom we often feel estranged these days, are thinking like this even if they're too polite to throw the questions in our faces. Computer instruction is expensive, but it's getting cheaper every day. Moore's Law predicts that whatever you spent today on your computer, in 18 months you'll get twice the power for the same price.
Pioneers always have to pay a higher price.
As the technology becomes ever cheaper and ever more common, traditionally disadvantaged groups will find ways to exploit the medium in startling new ways. I think we will soon see an astounding Renaissance in the ghettos and barrios as computer technology reaches cultures that have plenty to say in the medium, but not yet the means to say it. More than once, I've encountered such students and found that their computer monitor was a doorway out of a dungeon - an escape from a small school that couldn't begin to meet their needs, or from a trailer camp where they were effectively jailed by their scanty pensions. Go into the newsgroups and you'll meet all kinds of weird and wonderful people who have finally found a way out of some nightmarish oubliette where they could not communicate with anyone, let alone with kindred spirits. Countless more people are still in those oubliettes, desperate for some kind of contact with the rest of humanity.