By the late 1990s, the evangelical discourse had displaced any sense that online education could be something other than a means of totalizing reform. The opposition between technology and tradition cut off a line of development through which conventional modes of education could be embodied in technology. Online education's adoption as a strategic initiative privileged operational values in its implementation and adoption. Pedagogical innovations, even where these were progressive from a humanistic standpoint, tended to be appropriated to align technology with economic rationalization. And the vision of a fundamentally new institution--the virtual university--directed all these developments along a particular path. Far from the faculty-based initiative it was in the 1980s, by 2000 online education had become one of the most divisive issues in the university. [For the complete volume, "Technology and the Politics of University Reform: The Social Shaping of Online Education. Digital Education and Learning," see ED613097.]