Pedagogical shibboleths such as "collaborative," "constructive," "active discovery," "student-centered," etc. are frequently heard today, especially among those involved with the use of educational technologies. However, many faculty continue to teach as if such technologies were a passing fad and simply the latest technological idolatry in a closing century's long line of such compelling, and momentary, liberations. Some educators may even feel that their techno- or cyberphobia is even a sign of preserving the western intellectual heritage in the face of an electronic glitzy blitz on superhighways going nearly instantaneously nowhere.

Then there are the cyberphiliacs who have never met a silicon chip not hailed as salvation-by-megabytes. This crowd is full of a kind of eschatological, perhaps even apocalyptic, fervor for the coming technoheaven. What to think, what to do, in this kind of cyberography when one is either facing a traditional classroom of students, or is mentoring a totally online course? How to be if one has neither the viruses of technophobia nor technophilia?

On a personal note, I used to say not so many years ago that I had no need for a computer in my office since I was in the humanities and life was not a calculation, but a meditation, not a digital configuration, but a dynamic spiritual reality. Virtual reality was a vestigial one, a future remnant of the present. Give me my electric typewriter. I did start to use a word processor and, yes, it was helpful. The mid-90s were at hand and I was embarrassed that I could not even send an email. Shouldn't I have been born in the medieval world anyway?

From Computer Jester to Quester