In one of the author's academic homes at the University of Hawai'i, the "Globalization Research Center", educators are trying to gain a better understanding of the ways in which new technologies and ways of organizing learning across the globe have been transformed in the last five to eight years and, more importantly, they are seeking to get a sense of how they will be transforming in the next five to eight years. They are deeply concerned about the implications of the digital divide that creates social and economic inequities between those who have access to these technologies and those who do not. These issues and concerns provide a context for thinking about distance education and its role within the university as the author has come to think about it. In this article, the author describes the global context and the challenges that the university faces as its involvement in distance education projects increases. He offers three useful principles that will act as guide to action in proceeding with these developments. These include: (1) the principle of multiple modalities in which the author means not only the techniques but also the aesthetics and qualifying practices of distance education; (2) ensuring that distance education is neither independent nor in competition with traditional, campus-based classroom pedagogical techniques and orientations; and (3) seeking ways to create virtual communities of distance learners and tie them to those non-virtual communities that constitute the core of the university.