And we can’t rely on a purely technological salvation, building houses on the shifting sands of innovative digital platforms, with all the attendant myths and misconceptions. Which aspects of digital publishing are actually promising, useful, and/or usefully innovative for the near and long term? The costs of innovation are high; the illusions promoted are many. The horizon is filled with multiple mirages, of magically conjured multimodal and variably mediated artifacts, where crowdsourced, cloud-based productions synthesize amateur and professional expertise into a happy harmony of intellectual industry that “democratizes” scholarship and popularizes academic practice in ways that might fulfill the long-dead John Dewey’s most ambitious yearnings for a fully participatory community of learning. Among the host of current projects, some are silicon snake oil, some are the solid foundation of futures ahead, and many define the spectrum between reality and illusion. Learning to distinguish among them is crucial.