Scholarship's reliance on humanism as a critical principle is problematic and needs to be called into question. The issue of access in "Computers and Composition" scholarship illustrates how a critical reliance on humanism may actually betray humanist values scholars in the field tend to promote. Scholarship in "Computers and Composition" has cultivated a vision of computer technology as having the power to democratize existing power relationships and to broaden the base of privilege by opening discourse communities to those formerly barred access by gender, class, or race. But the computer empowers only those to whom it is available. While the unequal distribution of computers in the nation's schools presents a formidable barrier to access, scholars realize that solving the problem of access may not be enough. There is a stubborn and widening gap between the humanist vision of computers and the debilitating effects computer technology has on the hope for equal education. The best way to reconcile the technological view of the computer and humanistically formed goals as an educator is to limit the role of computers as much as possible--to eschew computer-conferencing software and develop curriculum that introduces students to the computer as, essentially, a fancy typewriter. (Contains 24 references.) (CR)