The Internet is clearly on the way to becoming an integral tool of business, communication, and popular culture in many parts of the world. Computer Mediated Communications has a wide range of supporters and detractors. Some individuals argue the Internet will revolutionize social interactions, where others argue that the Internet will lead to loss of privacy, impersonal communications and isolation. There are also those who argue that the Internet is also being presented as a pedagogical tool for changing how public education is delivered. We believe that the Internet is a neutral social structural tool with several positive possibilities. However, the Internet's extraordinary growth is not without concern. Of particular relevance is the issue of the potential impact of the Internet and computer-mediated communications on the nature and quality of social interaction, especially among young people. This article is an analysis of the possible consequences online communication might have on social interaction rituals. We focus on the current cyber-youth who have grown up with the Internet being a routine part of their everyday life and interaction rituals. A review of current research literature on online interaction and education use of the Internet reveals that in the United States a significant portion of youths are actively using the Internet as an important form of social interaction. This article explores what possible positive and negative outcomes may arise from cyber-youth using the Internet as a primary means of social interaction and how that might influence their development of their interaction ritual skills.

This paper presents methods and challenges attendant on the use of protocol analysis to develop a model of heuristic processing applied to research ethics. Participants are exposed to ethically complex scenarios and asked to verbalize their thoughts as they formulate a requested decision. The model identifies functional parts of the decision-making task: interpretation, retrieval, judgment and editing and seeks to reliably code participant verbalizations to those tasks as well as to a set of cognitive tools generally useful in such work. Important difficulties in the reliability and external validity of measurement are evaluated and a small set of illustrative data is used in support of that discussion. Results indicate that both intuitive emotional but also more deliberative cognition is present which is consistent with work in related literatures in expertise and in neuropsychology. Finally, the theoretical and practical potential of the approach is elaborated, particularly through links to a framing in Aristotelian ethics.

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In the last decade, the academic library has been transformed into an environment which is heavily reliant on computers. At the same time, usage of academic computer applications elsewhere on campus has increased. This study was conducted to determine if there is a relationship between student use of a university library and student use of computers. Results of this study are reported, and implications for academic libraries in areas such as user education, information technology support and library/computer centre cooperation are discussed.

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