In the past few days, I learned that technoculture and academia are, politically, diametrically opposed to one another, the one being phobic of the other. Simulations opens doors to the virtually inaccessable while closing doors to the accessable if you'd only try. Does "distance education" cater to the agoraphobic "learner" (they're no longer students, if you've noticed the terminology) who prefer the flat interface of the screen to the code and database of tactile, physical relationships with education? Is the "learner" agora- or precedent- phobic; the "student" who buries herself in passé literature a technophobe?
Kittler, probably, would say that the push to "distance education" is only natural, as computers are as mirrors of the subtly powerful subconscious (in "Symbolism" and something); and how better to learn than with self-reference? Many of his contemporaries, other professors, only use the computer if they have to. William Gibson wrote about computers on a typewriter. My final project is attempting to conflate poetry ("the beautiful" sociolinguistically encapsulated; how poetic!) with Manovichian (wouldn't he be pleased?) computer theory.