e. Editors and system operators must contend with the fact that electronic transmissions, lacking even the friendly cues that attractive letterhead and a signature can provide, often seem unnecessarily harsh (Turner, 1988, p. A

he has read. The purpose of a humanistic list is not to encourage fan mail; it is to transmit ideas cleanly and clearly with as little interference from social conventions designed for face-to-face meet- ing as possible. That, of course, means that we have to d

The primary consideration in creating any efficient electronic discussion group is not technical, but social. It is not enough to amass the names of a group of individuals who may or may not be interested in the focus of the list and to tell them how to contact one another; what is needed is a core of participants who will have reasons to correspond with one another, who will introduce more people to the list, and who can be counted upon to become dependent on the discussion group they themselves create. In other words, we must first begin with a group of people who already form a social network. Then that has to be transferred to a system such as Bitnet or Internet. Finally, the whole endeavour must be supported until, through computerization, it transcends the limitations of time and space imposed on earlier forms of communicatio

can figure out how to contact anyone else on the system, or even who is available for contact, so I have undertaken to provide telecommunications resources

My own experience with the system suggests that it is better than the telephone because communications can be captured to disk and kept for reference; because the receiver of a question has time to check his/her responses; because once a message or file is sent, it is delivered immediately to the recipient's account; and because the system is funded on a subscription basis by the institu- tions, and users are not normally charged for the distance a message travels. I have used Bitnet and Internet to put together conference programs; to help write a major grant application with three other people spread over two continents; to locate and receive software one-half hour after I realized I needed it; to trade ideas and information with others working on similar projects and to learn of publication opportunities for projects on which I was currently workin

The ability to assemble ourselves quickly into groups capable of concentrating everyone's focus on a problem without the difficulties and consequences of bringing the participants together physically would seem to be the genuine successor to flight in anyone's register of the most important technological developme

y. Writing and talking are not merely tools of our trade; they are our product and our raw material and the subjects of our investiga- Patrick W. Conner is Professor of English at West Virginia University where he teaches and researches Anglo-Saxon language and literature. He is the author of Anglo-Saxon Exeter (Boydell and Brewer, 1992) and the editor of The Abingdon Chronicle, volume 12 in the Collaborative Edi- tion of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (forthcoming). He is also creator of The Beowulf Workstation, a HyperCard application to aid students in studying Beowulf. tion

"' First, humanists must be aware that they are engaging primarily in social, not technical, end