Hi David, One of the elements missing from your list, and not yet mentioned by others in their excellent and helpful responses, is - impact on conceptions of knowledge, wisdom, and how we acquire these. These topics - technically, of epistemology - for better and for worse may be of interest only to philosophers. If so, ignore the rest of this. There are two central books here - Albert Borgmann, Holding on to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium, University of Chicago Press, 2000. Hubert Dreyfus, _On the Internet_. Routledge Press, 2001. I've written an essay that reviews and comments on Borgmann's central claims here, along with some reference to Dreyfus: Borgmann and the Borg: Consumerism vs. Holding on to Reality, Techné: Journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology 6(1), 2002. <http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v6n1/ess.html> And,at the risk of violating all sorts of copyright laws - a sketchy document is available at http://www.drury.edu/ess/notesondreyfus.html Most of the document is devoted to clarifying for my students what Kierkegaard and Dreyfus mean vis-à-vis knowledge gained through the web and the Net. As I hope these notes help clarify - by all means, by drawing on Kierkegaard's taxonomy of knowledge (aesthetic / ethical / religious), Dreyfus' taxonomy indeed heads us in the direction of the metaphysical, though not necessarily religious. Briefly, the religious stage of human wisdom and existence for Kierkegaard involves a level of commitment and risk not found in the aesthetic and ethical stages. As Dreyfus puts it, our most important commitments are neither the ones that I arbitrarily choose nor the ones that I am obliged to keep because of my social role. Rather, these special commitments are experienced as grabbing my whole being. When I respond to such a summons by making an unconditional commitment, this commitment determines who I am and what will be the significant issue for me for the rest of my life. Political and religious movements can grab us in this way as can love relationships and, for certain people, such vocations as the law or music. (19) Of course, this sort of argumentation will drive social constructivists and postmodernists nuts - but from my perspective, the arguments are critical and I'm by no means convinced that the s.c. / p.m. schools have clearly won the day on this. So, to put it in a nutshell: with regard to your question - if Borgmann and Dreyfus are right, then, if we increasingly identify knowledge, information, wisdom, and learning with what is available via CMC to the exclusion of all other forms of knowledge, wisdom, and learning, we run the risk of losing not simply whole kinds of knowledge and wisdom that do _not_ fit through the pipelines of CMC (at least in their current forms), but further, we risk losing both the abilities and awareness of these abilities for gaining and refining such knowledge and wisdom - knowledge and wisdom that historically in both Western and Eastern traditions are characteristically presented as centrally important to becoming human and living humane lives. Before anyone gets too riled up - please note that having said this, I also make as much use as possible of distance learning techniques in my own teaching; it is clear that the Internet, the Web, and CMC more broadly have extraordinary capabilities for doing extraordinarily good things, etc. - these matters are not necessary either/or's, in my view. O.k. - hope that helps? Cheers, Charles Ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/ Professor II, Globalization and Applied Ethics Programmes Norwegian University of Science and Technology NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/pres/bridgingcultures.php Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23