Education on the internet: anonymity vs. commitment

Many claim that the Internet will produce a new superior form of education open to anyone anywhere. In 1850 Soren Kierkegaard condemned the Press for contributing to the nihilism of his age by cultivating risk-free anonymity and idle curiosity thereby leveling all meaningful differences. He would surely have denounced the Internet for the same reasons. Kierkegaard would have seen that World Wide Web promotes his two nihilistic spheres of existence - the aesthetic and the ethical spheres - and repels the third, nonhilistic, religious sphere. In the religious sphere, nihilism is overcome by making a risky, unconditional, commitment, but the Net, which promises a risk-free, simulated world, tends to undermine rather than support such commitments. I point out that learning a skill requires the kind of commitment which is undermined by the Internet and, furthermore, that education at its best depends on apprenticeship. The proximity required by apprenticeship, however, is impossible in cyberspace.