"We take actuality into virtuality," which, he says, is not "good." He says, "We left the New World to go to the Newer, Virtual World to build new cities and we bungled it. And still are, in my own humble opinion, bungling it." He presses us to think beyond current philosophical, cyberlogical paradigms in order to create spaces that do not carry with them traditional views that do not work. 

Where is writing headed? 

Cindy Selfe
Theme: The Expanding Notions of Both Composition and Text 

Cindy tells us that she "would like to think that the kinds of texts that we're beginning to ask students to create in online environments (and those we are beginning to create ourselves) are not limited only to conventional genres, and certainly not limited only to conventional conceptions of 'writing.'" She goes on to tell us that "one of the most interesting areas of work that [she] can see in our field has to do with an expanded notion of both composition and text that goes way beyond our current-traditional understanding of these terms." 

Are we teaching the kind of writing needed by our constituents? 

Joel English
Theme: The Necessity of Teaching Computer Literacy in Composition Classes 

Joel says that "critical technological literacy 'will have had' established itself as a basic component of composition education, becoming an aim of our classroom parallel with critical writing and critical reading. . . . " He cautions us that "if we send our students away from the composition classroom without knowledge, experience, and rhetorical command of communication, information, and composition technologies and the conventions of those technologies, then we must consider them functional illiterate-- functionally illiterate graduates of our writing programs." 

How will we assess success when we use computers in our classrooms? 

Bill Condon
Theme: The Challenge of Assessing Performance in a Technology-Rich Classroom 

Bill tells us that "if the challenge of teaching in the age of interaction is great, the challenge of evaluation is even greater. . . . " He tells us that "a crucial factor in the challenges new technologies present is the sheer range of performance that is now possible in a writing class" and that "performance assessments, in this new setting, can help us turn a forbidding challenge into an unparalleled opportunity." 

Have we lost the 'writing' in computers and writing? If so, is it a mistake, or are there bigger things we can gain by teaching 'writing' in MOOs or writing to the WWW? Do we still call this writing? 

Gail Hawisher
Theme: The Increase of the *Kinds* of Writing We Will Need to Teach in Our Composition Classrooms 

Gail tells us that "writing is headed into 'more' of everything (alphabetic text, multi media texts, hypertexts)" and that "writing on the web is . . .writing, and that to regard it as something other than writing approaches foolishness." Her observation is echoed in the voices of her students: Sigfried Gold says that "the danger is not that we'll lose anything in writing on computers but that we'll gain too much and that that gain will lay the groundwork for much more profound and material losses later," and Walt Huntsman tells us that "writing (no matter how it was done in any era) has always been more than the mere inscription of words upon the page." 

Judi Kirkpatrick
Theme: The Danger We and Our Students Face If We Don't Teach Computer Literacy 

Judi warns us that "in this late age of dwindling print" writing is headed "through the networks, in the wires. . . places that are "cheap and pretty easy to get to much trouble, potentiating the dissolution of authority and ownership over the world of ideas." She tells us that "if teachers don't find these spaces and use them, ask their students to use them, inventing and reinventing ways of writing, they do so at their own peril, for others will move beyond us and take our students with them."