Computers have found their way into philosophy over the last twenty years or so, though philosophers disagree about the significance of this fact for philosophy itself. Many philosophers see technology merely as an aid to productivity. There probably aren’t many professional philosophers who still use typewriters; most use computers for writing, and e-mail and the web for scholarly communication. The use of “Web 2.0” tools, such as blogs, wikis, and the like have been adopted by still a minority of philosophers, and there remains a fair degree of skepticism about the usefulness of such tools for research purposes. The availability of online access to many journals is a great help, though access and availability varies widely by institution, and by journal. There are only a handful of “online only” journals. No established hard-copy journal that I know of has gone exclusively online, though most have made back issues available electronically, often through jstor.org or other aggregators. Use of the web by scholarly societies varies. The American Philosophical Association provides information for members (including Jobs for Philosophers) through its website (http://www.apa.udel.edu/apa/index.html) but one still can’t join or renew membership online. Specialty sites, such as this one, and blogs like Certain Doubts (http://fleetwood.baylor.edu/certain_doubts/) and Pea Soup (http://peasoup.typepad.com/peasoup/) have strong followings.

Digital technology has had a significant “back-office” impact on journals, publishing generally, and conferencing. Many journals and philosophical conferences allow electronic submission of manuscripts. Some require it. Manuscript handling for books is largely done electronically, with e-mail still the most widely used method for sharing files. Some conferences provide electronic pre-prints of papers in advance of the conference. Occasionally teleconferencing is used. At an international conference I helped organize in Tokyo, we beamed in a speaker with high quality real-time video from the U.S. who would have otherwise been unable to present. I think that most philosophers would find the idea of back-channel online discussion unattractive. It is expected that conferees will attend to the presenter, and will reserve comments for the allotted discussion. Most philosophers still read prepared talks, and few use multi-media aids. Laptop use among conferees during sessions is still rare, in my experience.

As a faculty member at a liberal arts college, I can report that faculty as a whole don’t enthusiastically embrace digital technology in teaching. It’s probably somewhat generational. There are still many faculty who came of age before the widespread use of computers, and are not enthusiastic users exploring the cutting edge. As easy as computers are to use these days, innovation requires a certain comfort level with technology, and often faculty are aware that they are less comfortable with technology than their students. But innovation is occurring, and there’s a good deal of inter-institutional collaboration. One example is an organization called NITLE (National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education – htttp://www.nitle.org) Some faculty use social software in teaching. I have made extensive use of online discussion forums in some of my courses. As the quality of such tools improves and the tools themselves become easier to use in open-source packages such as moodle (http://www.moodle.org) I expect that we will slowly see wider adoption. In upper division courses it’s easier than ever to find and assign and make available relevant journal articles. One isn’t constrained to the offerings in a particular anthology. I have also found the use of instant messaging services for “virtual office hours” to be very effective. These activities and services only work well when they are carefully planned and circumscribed. For example, in the courses in which I use them, I make participation in online discussion forums a required part of the course work, with clear expectations for contributions. When I offer virtual office hours, I provide clear guidelines for students about both my availability and the expected scope of such real-time discussions. For example, I won’t discuss due dates, extensions, and other business matters during virtual office hours.

You ask whether the Internet will “spark a significant shift in philosophy as it is currently studied and practiced.” In some sense, the shift has already occurred. I doubt that most philosophers working twenty-five years ago could have imagined the extent to which networked computation would figure into philosophical communication. But the question of whether the Internet and digital technology broadly construed will change the way we do philosophy in some fundamental sense, is a more difficult question to answer. Much of philosophical practice is unchanged by digital technology. We’re still reading papers and books, evaluating arguments, and giving talks, getting comments, and writing papers and books. The technology helps us do this. But it doesn’t appear to change the methods or subject matter itself. However, in the broader context of scientific and cultural change, the larger question is whether digital technology has changed scientific (and other) inquiry. If it has, insofar as philosophy is a consumer of scientific ideas, and an interpreter of conceptual change, then philosophy would also undergo some significant change.

I couldn't resist adding to Saul's thorough response. The combination of technology and philosophy raises many issues, of which two have intrigued me particularly, both of which were inspired by observing the online interactions of my teenagers. First is how the real-time communication technology so embedded in young people's social practices can be used in teaching philosophy. The second pertains to Saul's comment (above) about philosophy's role as an interpreter of conceptual change: I believe technology is very definitely shifting some of our standard philosophical concepts, especially in ethics (though this "especially" may be a reflection of my own specialization).

Like Saul, I've put some of the more casual forms of computer-mediated communication to use in my classes with great success, including an instant messaging account that I also call "virtual office hours" (here I thought I'd invented the term!). My students love it, especially when they're studying for exams, working on papers, or want to pursue a line of philosophical inquiry that they didn't feel comfortable bringing up in class (due to time or embarrassment constraints). I'm also on my university's facebook network, courtesy of one of my earliest students, who promised it would enhance my teaching effectiveness...and she seems to have been right (for reasons that I'm still pondering; see below). From the facebook, students who choose can visit my blog, which treats of various philosophical issues in ways they aren't normally treated by the coursework, and which seems to have sparked a gratifying amount of philosophical interest where there was none before. Also like Saul, I've instituted a few simple rules, though mine are self-imposed: for example, I will not request "buddy" or "friends" status with any student, though I will accept such a request from any; and if I am not a student's facebook friend, I will not visit his or her profile. I haven't found it necessary (so far) to circumscribe topics that I will discuss with students online; and if I've signed into IM, I'm fair game (though I do sometimes filter conversations with Away messages like, "Grading exams; please message with urgent questions only").

The second facet, the one I'm still pondering and still writing about, is the way electronically-mediated socialization is reshaping concepts like personhood, identity, integrity and privacy. For instance, people can gain a "rounder" (to use a literary term meaning fuller, more multi-faceted) familiarity with someone more easily than before, and this can be a very good thing...but it can also be bad, especially when the electronic data used to round out the person is in error or not intended for public consumption. As stated in recent New York Times Sunday Magazine article (describing for readers of my generation the younger generation's facility with online self-revelation), "Their concept of privacy is different from yours." Electronic communication leaves both the identity of the sender and the meaning of the communication subject to radical indeterminacy. A single embodied person can maintain two or more separate online personae, and two or more embodied persons can share one online persona. Interactional partners can be blocked, ignored or deleted -- or investigated, traced or tracked -- without their knowledge. All of these features of technology change the parameters within which we decide how we ought to be toward each other and deserve, in my opinion, serious philosophical investigation.