Once a song enters my brain and becomes part of my inner landscape, it becomes entangled with my beliefs and impressions and no longer belongs to Coldplay. It becomes part of me and I become part of it, and what it means to me is just as valid as what it means to its creators.

Sure, it makes us feel smart when we’ve finished deciphering a page of Aristotle, but when we’re unwinding after a day of work we prefer revel in a bit of fluff teevee and a trashy novel. Yes, it’s candy, but that’s not all–there’s something in it we need. Because when we’re sitting before our Fox TV show, or knuckles deep in a Laurell K. Hamilton novel, we’re not just thinking, we’re imagining. We’re engaging a wholly different part of ourselves, and it feels good.

The challenge that academia faces is psychological and epistemological. We have to teach our content experts, those people who are intimately involved in the goings-on of the college and who can gauge the college’s temperament, to keep the web at the forefront of their minds.