As we embrace the concept of e-mentorship, we not only wonder whether face-to-face mentoring can be replaced by an electronic doppelganger (i.e. a phantom twin), but also encounter questions that deal with the fundamental nature of mentoring. What does it mean, for example, to have a ‘personal' relationship with a mentor or role model? Conceivably, such questions may only have importance from the perspective of a naïve and overly sentimental view of mentorship. As e-mentoring supplants the ‘old fashioned' way of mentoring, we may be in danger of idealising the latter and, as a result, missing opportunities offered by the former.
