The proposed deployment of the National Research and Education Network (NREN) offers an unprecedented opportunity for shaping a new expression of civic and pedagogical culture. It can be a positive force for change or a regressive distribution of resources and influence to those already most in possession of them. To prepare for the NREN, the federal government should provide funds for hardware, software, training, and support, beginning with schools most deprived at present and ending with schools already rich in technology. Financing may, in fact, be the easy part of establishing the NREN. The harder part will be establishing the network in such a way as to preserve its ability to provide educational equity, and to use it as a Trojan horse to bring high-access technology into the schools. That technology is in itself a Trojan horse to bring about school restructuring through changes it can make in attitudes toward education. The introduction of the network will also bring into sharp focus issues of freedom of speech and network content. Implementing the NREN is part of engineering social change. Society must be ready to meet its challenges and define its responsibilities. (SLD)