The effects of a technology will not be apparent for some time after its introduction. Much of the discourse about the Internet is ideologically charged, filled as much with the hopes and fears of individual authors as with the reality of the medium's effects.

    In a class which took place via six virtual rooms on the Internet, the authors examined the impact of a virtual tutor with varying degrees of social presence on measures of student emotionality, task-orientation, formality, and expression of tension. They consider the effects of passing time on the robustness of the effect when cues about the communicator are "filtered out". Do the social presence theories hold up well in the age of ubiquitous Internet?

What's behind utopian and dystopian views of the Net? Why do consumers willingly expose themselves to messages from Internet marketers? Have e-mail surveys outlived their usefulness? How do theories about CMC as a "lean medium" hold up today? What factors determine the acceptance of an electronic marketplace by buyers and sellers?

    Would you buy a used car from this Web site? The author analyzes criteria which users consider important in determining their acceptance of an electronic marketplace.