As one of those professorial older geezers who has spent his life without the benefit of the Internet (thus in your words been "left behind"), I was absolutely charmed, nay, stupefied, by your editorial of Oct. 18. "Technology is a wonderful thing," it begins in wide-eyed bliss, and evidently education at Amherst has dramatically improved since spell check and the online library catalogue was introduced. No longer does a student spell "occurred" with one "r"! And instead of looking up Charles Dickens or Immanuel Kant in the card catalogue and immediately finding a call number for the book in question, you can mouse around for quite a while with the online business, trying to get a call number. (The bugs are being worked out, I'm told.)

What I really look forward to with bated breath however is a classroom equipped with SMARTboard! No longer will we merely be reading poems by W.B. Yeats or Thomas Hardy-in fact it may not be necessary to read them at all, what with the "interactive whiteboards" that will "enhance [my] lecture" if only I am "willing to take the leap." O brave new world that has such people in it to write such editorials and announce that "e-mail cannot be optional." I tremble in my boots.

William H. Pritchard

Professor of English