We are still bemused by the three hundred years of Newtonian simplification that made "rhetoric" a dirty word, but we are beginning to outgrow it. Digital expression, in such a context, becomes not a revolutionary technology but a conservative one. It attempts to reclaim, and rethink, the basic Western wisdom about words. Its perils prove to be the great but familiar perils that have always lurked in the divided, unstable, protean Western self .

The Computers & Writing field is a burgeoning cross-disciplinarian community of educators, working with computer-mediated communication technologies, in a collaborative effort to scrutinize the intersections and boundaries of composition, rhetoric and technology. This hypertextual thesis, submitted as a graduate project, likewise seeks to explore, define, and theorize online education, focusing on a small area of the field: the use of multi-user, Object Oriented environments called MOOs. While it is possible to do this in print form, hypertext offers a closer resemblance to the real-time capabilities of MOOs. It is hoped that this project will welcome and help guide interested individuals new to the online community or new to MOO. This hypertext will continue to develop and change, pointing to ongoing projects, encouraging active participation by all, practicing the theory and theorizing the practice.