It is a relief to read an analysis of the Internet that is not yet another contribution to the hyped-instrumentalist discourse typified by a "gee-whiz" ethos touting efficiency gains and the lasting technical transformation of education. Hubert Dreyfus' (2001) "On the Internet" is at one and the same time, philosophical, post-Nietzschean and also "computer-literate" or, better, computer-sensitive. In this article, the author focuses on Dreyfus' thesis on the Internet. It is a thesis as powerful as it is frightening, as simple and elegant as it is prophetic. Dreyfus major conclusion is that disembodied learning can only ever attain the stage of mere competence, and will not achieve the stage of self-mastery. The author finds this claim interesting, although it seems to him more of a working hypothesis--an empirical claim that now requires testing in some way. In his view, Dreyfus' work should be viewed more as the basis for an empirical research programme that regards its anti-metaphysical commitments as a series of working hypotheses that might profitably be tested. In this way one might also use Dreyfus' work on learning and his anti-Platonism in a retrospective way to cast a critical eye on the worst features that imbued centuries of educational theory and practice. (Contains 1 note.)