Futures, Vol. 30, No. 7, pp. 731–737, 1998 Pergamon  1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0016–3287/98 $19.00 + 0.00 PII: S0016–3287(98)00080-9 ESSAY Students staying home Questioning the wisdom of a digital future for Australian universities Greg Hearn and David Scott The understanding of the role of global digital technologies in the future of Australian universities mirrors the international debate as exemplified by some of the articles in this special issue of Futures. However, this debate between cautious optimists on the one hand and supreme optimists on the other is misleading, because the future for universities lies neither in a grudging acceptance of technology’s inevitability nor a mindless embrace of it. The complex evolution to a true ‘knowledge supernetwork’ requires an understanding of the socially constructed nature of technologies including the social technology known as learning. Moreover, it requires us to reinstate a perspec- tive missing from both the articles in this issue and from the debate in Australia, namely that of students.  1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved The contributors to this special issue are all provocative in their stances, united for the most part in the belief that global digital tech- nologies are central to an understanding of the future of universities. They range from those who are supremely optimistic 1 to those who are more circumspect in their optimism. 2,3 The dark side of these technologies, including their capacity to facilitate rampant commodification of knowledge, to reduce academic tenure and freedom and transform universities into out- some surveillance organisations 4 are of course all raised. As well, the importance of cultural and institutional histories is also acknowl- edged as significant in the future of tertiary Dr Greg Hearn is at The School of Communication, Queensland University of Technology, GPO Box 2434, Brisbane Qld 4001, Australia (Tel: + 61-7- 3864-2470; fax: + 61-7-3864-1811; email: G.Hearn@qut.edu.au). 731 education (e.g. Rahman 5 ). Essentially though the consensus is more positive than negative— the visions of the future we are provided with are not dystopic. As we will show in our discussion of the Australian situation, the debate is similarly poised in Australia with most academics cau- tiously optimistic that the net effect of digital globalism will be positive, despite the very real dangers and threats to universities that it raises. We too are optimistic about the potential of this technology. The key, we argue, is to understand the process of the technological/social revolution we are in the midst of, and to seek to minimise the dark side. So far we have seen insufficient wisdom in the Australian debate on how to achieve this. We believe the key is to recognise that although technology does have deterministic-like qual- ities, it is also open to substantial local interpretation—open but not inevitable; with the resulting implication that opportunities