Before examining the educational uses of computing (or rather networked digital information technology), we must consider it in the context of other information technologies.

First some propositions:

• Information technology does not begin with computers (Innis, McLuhan, Eisenstein, Ivins)
• Every form of infotech embodies or actualizes a theory of education and scholarship
• Every new infotech comes at a cost (Socrates): there's no free lunch
• The printed codex book is fast becoming an exotic object
• No medium is an island: Every new form of IT is remediated by previous ones and in turn changes them. (Grushin and Bolter)
• We naturalize all media born before yesterday, and see the new as "technology" (the typewriter as warm, fuzzy, cuddly object)
• We take each new form of IT as a form of presence and an escape from writing (Derrida).

Therefore, some essential questions

• Is it all still reading and writing, or will argumentation and even cognitive processes change? [Drury]
• What are the uses of computing and education
• Does computing only serve old approaches to the humanities, or does it iself provide new subjects for study in the humanities?
• Jeff Pack, Growing Up Digerate
• Subway Story
• What is an Author?
• Finally, what happens when one bases an entire institution on the connectivities of hypertext -- the University Scholars Programme, NUS