The Internet will not make everyone literate in the English major sense; it will make everyone literate in a new sense, one that may not please English majors. This is why one can claim a "new, living, breathing culture of letters" brought on by the Internet and not necessarily sound optimistic, although one can hardly claim such a thing without sounding interested. We, the text snobs, the English majors, will not be validated by the Internet, and in fact we may be buried by it if we don't start working very hard to understand what it is, and most importantly, the new literacy it will confirm.

The "knowledge domain" that will form the core of our discipline will soon exist primarily in electronic form and will be fed by increasingly less "managed" sources. As such it will be much more responsive to the new electronic literacies that will inform society at large, but it will be increasingly less recognizable to those of us academically trained under the restrictions/blessings of print literacy. The ACW and Kairos   and other Internet "agents" (the old word "publications" hardly fits) must come to two understandings, and rather quickly:

• What is the most serviceable form such learning agents must take (for there is no particular reason to mimic what print "publications" do)?

• What will "knowledge" become when it gains the universality of automobiles and telephones, when one can snatch nearly every possible fact or nearly every possible concept more easily than picking up a six-pack of coke at the 7-Eleven?

Will "formal" learning be pulled from its traditional enclaves, the classroom and the school, and blend somehow with one's daily activities, growing at the same time both invisible but significantly more influential societally? Like the old science fiction "knowledge pill," effortless knowing?