I am sometimes asked whether Internet studies is relevant, given the “dot-com bust” and the recent apparent plateau of Internet adoption
in the United States (Madden, 2003). In business schools, programs that flourished during the “dot-com boom” are struggling to retain funding and student interest (Foster, 2004). I generally reply that the consequences of the Internet (social, political, economic, etc.) are too great to ignore and are necessary areas of inquiry and that even if some of the more professional areas of education are struggling 170 they are not likely to vanish. Particularly in the academy, though, the reply is met with skepticism among those who see themselves as upholding traditional academic values in the face of trendy scholarship.