The World Wide Web (WWW) is the easiest Internet resource for many people to use, so much so that it is rapidly taking over the functions of most of the other available tools, including FTP and GOPHER. SFSU's Bulletin Board Service (BBS) is also making a transition to a Web environment, COW (Conferencing on the Web). The Web is so accessible and so interesting that university professors are using it to post syllabi, to publish articles (both in refereed journals and more casual forms), to conduct part or all of their classes, to participate in scholarly lists and to conduct research. The World Wide Web, in short, has many capabilities, only some of which have been tapped to date.

A danger, of course, lies in the very accessibility and popularity of the web. Students find the Web so easy to navigate with a click of their mouse buttons that they often tend to ignore the more difficult and important intellectual work involved in integrating information from disparate sources, analyzing the quality of information, recognizing the difference between knowledge and information and synthesizing their own interpretive frameworks. Faculty members in the Humanities, of course, are the best guides for students who want to use the Web's many valuable resources. We can guide students, helping them to develop the intellectual qualities they need to become critical thinkers, readers and writers.

These qualities vary, of course, from discipline to discipline. A most important reminder: keep your governing gaze on your discipline rather than on the computer. If the computer can help you to teach, research, advise and administer then it is worth using. If not, turn it off.