It all makes me feel a little green around the gills, and, well, old. I find myself straddling two cultures these days. As someone who runs four web sites, I have become a kind of unofficial computer geek, albeit one who knows next to nothing about how the machines work. I think it's neat that people who come up with wonderful new ideas and images and software put them out for free on the net, for anybody to use. When I first started doing this column, my idea was that I was writing these perfect little polished essays, and that they were complete in and of themselves.
Some people are scared of the net because it's too wide open, too uncontrollable.
Yes, indeed, that too. It's a pamphleteer's paradise. It's all stuff our students can use, except that I don't have to pay for it, select it, catalog it, and figure out a way to fit it on our shelves. But we don't have to take anybody's word for it, because the evidence is there on the net too. Our stodgy old governments have gotten with the program in a big way, putting out all their laws and court decisions and statistics and consumer information online.