The Internet is the operational tool of postmodernism’s worst-kept secret: that we live in a plagiaristic and unstable world where market dominance lasts as long as it takes somebody to copy the code, duplicate the idea, and market it better. How does information work in this environment? How does information validate itself, copyright itself, and mutate itself as our 24/ 7 working practice creates destabilizing demands on humans and machines? How does a university keep up with working practice? How long should its research projects last and how closely must it work with the unstable practitioners of the ever-moving digital coalface?

The university is the place where the truth, the universal, is sought. Where research can consider anything from the veracity of web logs to the influence of one seventeenth century English poem on Russian literary thought-and will always be seeking the truth, to add to, or replace, the cannon.

But in this, newly marketised, environment, teaching and research about technology poses enormous strains on the academy: not just by its constant iterations of upgrade: from the endless cycles of programming languages, through the Windows world of 95, 98 etc. and also, for example, the endlessly changing truths of the new media: content is king, communication is everything, interactivity is the only goal, new media is e-commerce, the database rules, the intranet works, design is crucial, digital television is the true Internet. The list goes on, is added to and subtracted from each month.

Remember ‘push’ technologies? Once, the revered Wired magazine dedicated an entire issue to the ‘push’ revolution, shortly before it launched its own push channel. A few weeks ago one of the leading technology companies in ‘push’ went bankrupt-in 1997 Rupert Murdoch had offered $500 million for it, and had been turned down by its management.