<snip> But there does appear to be rebellion afoot if my own class is any indication. We want numbers to research, we want to look at data - not read about someones fantasy/ guess in 1990. And I suspect that in order to be relevant, and I do believe in the need to be relevant in scholastic endeavour (even though others dont agree), this field of study will turn more towards real number crunching, rather than worrying about "cyberspace" and "cyber communities". <snip> Eero, I wouldn't want to get into the ontological differences between quantitative/qualitative approaches but I think it's worth bearing in mind that there have been some extremely 'numbers' based Internet research projects - both inside and outside of Computer Science. One of the most obvious areas is, in fact, the visualisations of the spatiality of cyberspace (see Martin Dodge's excellent http\\www.cybergeography.org site). I wouldn't want to suggest that these are more than performative 'imaginings' of cyberspace(s) but you can't deny - they're based on numbers. Paul.