With this issue we are pleased to bring you a series of articles that force us to think hard about our teaching and our professional lives. Each of the articles asks us to consider the tremendous impact that electronic technology exerts on our daily activities as scholars and teachers, and to question our responses to the technology. While we may agree that we enjoy our teaching and writing more today with computers than without computers, these articles ask us to go one step further in our thinking--they demand that we try to imagine where we are going with all this change. Although the questions are ones that cannot be answered easily, the very act of looking ahead--of engaging in critical speculation--is something we might do more of. The articles presented in this issue ask us to do just that: to look critically toward the future with an eye improving the environments in which we teach.

In "New Teaching: Toward a Pedagogy for a New Cosmology," Michael Joyce asks us to reconceive our pedagogy, asserting that each new day we are shaped by those we teach as much as we shape them. "Because we face a new world when we teach," Joyce argues, "ours must be a pedagogy for a new technology, a new teaching." In tracing this new teaching and the roles of scholar, teacher, and communicator are changed, Joyce makes the important point that computers are more than tools--that hypertext environments and networked collaborations force us to view the world differently and to imagine new possibilities. One of these new possibilities, Ann Duin and Kathleen Gorak tell us, involves collaborating in ways not easily done without computers. In "Developing Texts for Computers and Composition: A Collaborative Process," Duin and Gorak also argue that textbooks aimed at computers and composition instruction demand a more collaborative approach than other joint projects. In describing their efforts, they offer readers an approach that established connections for them with product managers, reviewers, students, and each other as they moved toward completion of their project.

In Computers and Controversy, we present Joe Amato's "Science-Literature Inquiry as Pedagogical Practice," Parts I and II. In his meditation on the possible consequences of electronic technology, Joe Amato examines "somewhat hypertextually" his perceptions of the relationships between teaching writing, technical writing, science literature, Michael Serres, knowledge-making, and electronic technology. He finds himself in many quandaries and asks readers to probe with him the many complexities posed by electronic technology. One such complexity, he argues, is that the metaphor of the mind is fast becoming a "contemporary freeway," and he wants to know, among other things, if it's free. Turning to the practical matter of testing, Emil Roy, in the Computer and Research section, presents a method that uses computers for placement exams, a "structured decision system." He argues that it is more economical and efficient than the process that uses real people as readers and asks us to consider it seriously.

In Computers and Practice, we continue this new section by presenting Doug Hesse's "Analysis, File Sharing, and Freestanding Computers: An 'Exigential' Sequence." This section is designed to explore some of the new pedagogies we must develop to accompany the new technology. Hesse offers us a systematic way of using computers for a first-year composition class that would be cumbersome, at best, without the use of computers. We invite other readers to share with us their new classroom practices as we move ever more steadily toward virtual environments.

And, finally, in our last section Johndan D'Eilola presents readers with a remarkable review of a book and software program. In "Structure and Text: Writing Space & STORYSPACE," D'Eilola reviews Jay Bolter's Writing Space at the same time that he examines Bolter, Joyce, and Smith's STORYSPACE, all the while, like our other authors, forcing us to think hard about new developments whose consequences are far from clear. Throughout his review--which is really much more than a review--D'Eilola argues that the book and program together provide a bridge between the "late age of print" (Bolter, 1990) and the "early age of silicone."

We hope you enjoy the articles we've collected for the April issue. We also look forward to seeing many of you at the Eighth Computers & Writing Conference to be held May 1-3 in Indianapolis, where presenters will continue to challenge our thinking about computers. As you read this issue and attend various conferences, please keep in mind the outstanding articles and dissertations to nominate for the 1992 Hugh Burns Dissertation Award and Ellen Nold Best Article Award. We need to reward the exceptional scholarship we constantly encounter in our reading and which contributes substantially to the vitality of Computers and Composition. And please keep those manuscripts coming. It is only with your support as readers and contributors that we can bring you the kind of journal you look forward to receiving with each new issue. See you in Indianapolis.