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Greetings all, I am a teacher of Computing and ICT living and working in Kent, in the south-east UK. I have been using (or being used by) electronic communications since about 1980. My writing is mainly academic (a few of published papers) and concerned with the use/purpose of ICT in schools and related issues of access and subject chioce. The fiction is unpublished and likely to remain that way. My current research interests are in the use of elecrtonic communications to form virtual communities. It includes issues about empowerment of groups who would normally be excluded, ownership of the media, accessibility, how much people choose to reveal about themselves and a whole bunch of other stuff. One area in which I am particularly interested is in the idea that anonymity empowers and confuses. If you don't know who/what I am, how do you respond to me? Prejudice doesn't work in teh same way if you don't know whether the person you are "talking" with is black, white, male, female, tall, short, fat, thin or uses glasses, or a hearing aid, or a wheelchair. This is of course without going into situations of people presenting themselves as other than they are. How much can a person tell of somebody with whom they have only had written communication? CJ