One of the greatest assets of this sped up, immediate access to cultural discourse is that it allows students new opportunities to re-interpret the ordinary discourse of their lived cultural experience-- to re-consume it through a different medium-- leading to new negotiated interpretations. As instructors of composition, we can use this medium to interrupt students' cultural experience; students can re-examine their assumptions about the impact of cultural artifacts and commodification in their daily lives. Web sites are hyped-up virtual representations of the American popular experience, presented oftentimes as information and decontextualized into unfamiliar space.

However, this access brings with it the realization that as a mirror, the web can only replicate the information, values, and critique that we as citizens put forth. I ask my students, "What really lies beneath the virtual imagery? Where is the information, the critique?" Before we can use this medium to affect social change, we must recognize to what extent it discourages such action.