Because I employ a cultural studies approach in my composition classroom, it is no surprise that I encourage students to examine the ideological dimensions of "ordinary discourse." What I have discovered though is that such an approach necessitates a second level of critique. As a teacher in networked environments, I maintain a critical stance in relation not just to cultural exchanges, but also to the cultural media in which such participation takes place. I would like to believe that computers will turn me into the "feminist cyborg guerrilla" Cynthia Selfe describes as "a kind of English teacher-activist who uses computer technology, a politically active being who employs the available technology as a medium for effecting political and educational change to support the expanded project of radical democracy" (76). However, I argue that we must first help students to research technology itself before we use it as a vehicle for change.

The types of critical research that I have in mind explore how the web as a medium encourages compliance with multinational structures like corporate television or soft drink dominance. That is where the next cultural studies and computers curriculum must intersect in the composition classroom-- making these economically and technologically dominant alliances the focal point of study. As instructors, we can also research ways for students to produce and distribute critical texts with the Internet, encouraging their active, multi-layered participation in the consumption and production model of cultural discourse. Computers must become not just the media through which we study the connection between cultural artifacts and hegemonic power, but the subject and site of such discussions as well.