The Internet is as unremarkable to most students today as fax machines are to us. But part of the reason, I believe, is that they don't realize what it is and what it can do, and that it's constantly changing - morphing might be a better term. Part of the fault lies with the educational system (high school, I mean) and, ironically, computer magazines, both of which have insisted on the Net primarily as a resource, a kind of big, amorphous library. And it's also, for the students, a souped-up telephone system. Libraries and telephone systems aren't particularly exciting institutions, at least not when you're 19 years old. We don't do enough, I believe, to stress the Net in its role as a playground for experimentation and creativity, and as something that we can all modify, adapt, and even alter radically. To me, that's what makes it an exciting medium: there's nothing stopping anyone from developing new ways of doing a great many things, even if these things are developed only as prototypes. There's another reason for the lack of interest, though. You can get a great deal of free stuff on the Internet, and our students know that. They download music, movies, software, porn, and much more, and because they've been doing so since adolescence or even earlier, the stuff has little value for them. When you're deluged by free music, when you can get it any time you want, it's no big deal after a while. I realize I'm sounding like my mother here - "How will you ever know the value of things if you don't have to work for them?" - but it seems true nevertheless. Neil Randall