From the Editor

Virtual Citings

In recent years the pages of CCC have begun to feature an increasing number of articles considering the promises and possible hazards of cyberwriting: In December 1994, Cynthia Selfe and Richard Selfe offered a trenchant critique of the utopianism of much talk about computers and writing in their "Politics of the Interface," while in a review-essay in the same issue Joseph Janangelo analyzed the theoryhope driving several new books on technoliteracy. In their May 1996 "Postings on a Genre of Email," a multivocal essay whose own form was itself hard to categorize, Michael Spooner and Kathleen Yancey puzzled over whether writing on the Net might be seen as new kind of prose genre, and in October 1996, Andrea Lunsford and Susan West discussed how both theories and legal guarantees of textual ownership are now being transformed in the landrush for rights to cyberspace. Two articles in this issue join this ongoing investigation: In "Literacy After the Revolution," the print version of his 1996 CCCC Chair's Address, Lester Faigley considers how access to cultural capital is simultaneously being opened up by the Net and closed down by the widening economic gap between rich and poor. And Geoff Sirc's "Never Mind the Tagmemics, Where's the Sex Pistols?" marks the first joint venture between CCC and an online journal, as his article will also soon appear, formatted with images in a hypertextual form, as part of the new PRE/TEXT: Electra(Lite) WebSite at http/lwwwpub.utdallas.edu/~atrue/PRETEXT/. I encourage CCC readers to look up Sirc's piece online and to enter the discussion about print and online publication that will also take place at the Pre/Text site.

But as crucial as it is that CCC continue to serve as a site for critical dialogue on electronic discourse, it also seems clear that the journal must itself venture into cyberspace, establish a presence online. (This was in fact one of the recommendations of the CCCC Caucus on Intellectual Property endorsed by a Sense-of-the-House Resolution at our March 1996 conference in Milwaukee.) I would thus like to issue a call here for a CCC online editor-that is, for someone working in composition who has the expertise, enthusiasm, and support required to set up and maintain a CCC Web Site. If you are interested in taking on this task, I would appreciate receiving a letter from you sketching out a brief plan for what CCC online might look like and indicating what forms of support you already have or would need to make CCC an effective presence on the Web. I hope to meet with prospective candidates for this position at CCCC in Phoenix, March 12-15, so I will need to hear from interested parties no later than February 28, 1996. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, concerns, ideas, or advice about this next step for the journal.

Joseph Harris University of Pittsburgh February 1997