This paper presents two studies of the use of the WWW in Scottish universities and American land-grant universities. First, we investigated the relationship between the organisational profile of a university department in Scotland and its structural connectivity on the WWW. A Spearman rank order correlation analysis revealed a number of strong correlation relationships between structural connectivity measures and the organisational profile based on research assessment exercise ratings, teaching quality assessments, student-staff ratios and funding levels. Linkage patterns from 13 Scottish academic sites to commercial sites in Britain and America highlighted the impact of culture and the appropriateness of information technologies on the acceptance of the WWW. The second study is a content survey of WWW-based education activities in American land-grant universities to investigate successful applications of these enabling techniques in education. The two studies together highlighted cultural, political and technological interactions in the use of the WWW. ᭧

T raditional discourses emanated from sites where agents of knowledge received their professional formation. Postmodernists suggest that the principle that the acquisition of knowledge is indissociable from personal formation is becoming obsolete and that the nature of knowledge cannot survive the information technology revolution unchanged. W e examine these propositions with reference to a qualitative study of university staff who were developing and using W orld W ide W eb (W W W ) courses.T he interview material supports the view that the W W W exempli es a weakening of the framing of knowledge, has an elective af nity with the individual indulgence of postmodernism and is not effectively controll ed through the community of science. Yet the W W W is parasitic on the project of modernism. Its user-friendly surface conceals extreme underlying complexity.T he project of reducing professional training to the telematic transmission of an organised stock of knowledge is shown to be ultimately incoherent because it ignores the crucial need for implicit understanding and skill.

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