In December 2004, Google announced an agreement with five major research libraries to digitize 30 million volumes from their collections for access on the internet.  "Universal availability," once again, were the key watchwords.  In the meantime, broadcasting, cable, computer technology companies enage in a race for competitive market advantage through mergers, strategic alliances, cross-marketing, reaching an unprecedented level of concentration in the consumption and distribution of media content.  This means the way you check out a book from Green library could be very different in about three more years.  Microsoft IBM Cisco, all those companies in the race for these network convergences, will be perfectly poised to deliver corporate degree programs, much like the University of Phoenix does today, only with access to the country’s top library collections. 

Its easy to imagine that the commercial sector will deploy all of the major teaching innovations in over the next decade: for example, lessons and entire classes taught by the most celebrated faculty at wholesale prices on Amazon.  Higher education will be viewed as one more source of easy profit, much like health and social services already function today in America.

There is a possibility that this technologic situation will create a new ‘common-sense’ in which "knowledge" becomes so media-dependant, commercial, universalized, and standardized that "the academy" will once and for all loose any sense of integrity as an institution. 

Such a future gets those on the left, who already recognize the campus as a corporate environment, stuck in the headlights asking themselves, "is that such a bad thing?"  In the 1960s, campuses across the country and globe served as the battlegrounds for civil rights organization and strategy.  But today, its quiet on campus; is the university still a site worth fighting for?