“How can we circumscribe the tyranny of technology and its effects on our personal and professional lives?” a recent Chronicle blurb/post asks. It’s 6 A.M. I feel the rush to drink my coffee quickly and get to the gym before V wakes up. And yet, I am online.

But do I feel tyrannical rule? The rhetoric of educational approaches to technology - or those approaches we recognize in the Chronicle and related publications - is hyperbole. Doomsday. Oppression. Tyranny. The rhetoric of our own organizations often reflects that hyperbole, either in the negative, or note the over-romanticized positive that eventually diminishes the work people do. Indeed, NCTE/CCCC’s blunder is they appear not to understand the very technology they love. They love Facebook so much that they want to professionalize its space. But why? And how? They love the Web so much they want a weblog, so they sign up for a Blogger account as a thirteen year old would. Why?

Facebook, Blogger, these are avenues of the we love it but we don’t know much about it. Like Randy Newman proudly yelling out he loves L.A., NCTE/CCCC seems to want to say, “We love the Web!” So they yearn to have a Facebook profile. And for that, they need a volunteer to set up the profile. They are not yet sure how to do it.

Such hyperbolic love feels more ike tyranny than anything I experience. But I am not online at 6 A.M. because of hyperbolic love. I don’t love the Web. I don’t love the Internet. I don’t love email. I don’t feel ruled by these “things” either. Information brushes against information. In doing so, we don’t need to be set free or set in chains. It’s 6 A.M. and I’m online while I drink coffee because that’s the ritual of American reading habits brought to new media.  Reading over coffeee.

I’m online because I am drinking my coffee.