An element of consideration is to examine how changes in technology effect our definitions of text and what we are asking to collect from the employees. For example: work - are we asking for access to all emails to track the generation of ideas? Are random moments surfing the internet to be counted as wasted time or brainstorming? If researchers recognize the importance of intertextuality, where do we stop in collecting influences on the creation of knowledge? Not to extend too far into a discussion of postmodern questions of authorship, most specifically Foucault's questioning of what do we study when someone is revered as an author, but the issue of what counts as a text and furthermore how we will define a published or public work is being debated.

Gurak and Silker (1997) discuss ethical concerns when studying online communication. They examine what can be considered public on the internet and what is private and when does permission need to be gained. These same concerns can be brought into workplace communications as knowledge sharing moves online. What is public and what is private? An online discussion in a chatroom is happening in a very public space, but the presence of a researcher is quite different than that of another people with similar interests gathering information on the given topic. When collaboration and discussions move online, or even to a corporate net that is accessible only to a given few, how will we classify the resulting data. Do we describe the environment that is created by the users or the environment in which the people physically are. Is a text being created if interactions are written? Researchers will need to be clear on how they define these new environments and their possibilities for texts, or honest about the murky nature of their definition. Gurak and Silker conclude that as internet technologies change: "researchers will need to continue evaluating their decisions against currently accepted research standards and ongoing technological change" (p. 404). Their statement relates to ethical decisions, but I question allowing the past to determine future findings. Part of this project is to challenge the traditionally accepted standards. If we must check our concepts of traditional spaces against current definitions we run the risk of ignoring the possibilities technologies open up for us.

On the 605 seminar blog, I questioned race and identity on the web. My main concern is that identity on the web relies heavily on stereotypes. Lisa Nakamura's book Cybertypes explores the very issue of how people represent themselves and read identity online. The very fact that one creates a persona for others to view makes research problematic. We, who study the workplace, are thrown the complexity of studying the persona on the screen (in the virtual community formed by chatrooms, emails, teleconferencing) or studying the workers we can see typing at the computers. Do we examine why representations change and what would cause people to want to portray themselves differently? Or, can we argue that the person represented in the virtual is just as real as the person doing the typing? These questions are discussions that need to be had publicly amongst those in the field of professional writing and computers and composition.

Our choices of what we study, persona, person, virtual identity and which of these identities is more true (if any) than another should be informed by Nakamura's examination of virtual identities. She examines how users of virtual communities can be "identity tourists" and attempt to try on personalities and racial identities that are often based on stereotypes of how they view who they want to be represented as. Nakamura indicates that it is mostly young men portraying themselves as Asian Samurai's, Ninja's, or another type of martial image. One of the most startling and real conclusions she reaches is that: "only too often does one person's 'liberation' constitute another's recontainment within the realm of racialized discourse" (xv). The internet has not made people free of their race, but instead propagated stereotypes and caused those belonging to certain racial groups to be further boxed in by their identity. In person to person communications people taking on "white" traits are more accepted by those in the business community (note that I am making this assumption, but hey, this is the US and it is true). Nakamura notes that this is also true in cyberspace (xvi). In order to be more accepted online, marginalized communities must conform to norms set by the dominant discourse.