in front of you sits a card catalog drawer. what do you think? "am i supposed to click on it? is it here to remind me of the way i have completely forgotten how to use one?"12L

each letter, but not every letter has a link in it. this way, you have to revert back to the old way to find thinks.

hypertext and the individual

but that was all just a short preface of no consequence. the idea is that you have to revert back to an old convention just to find out some information. twenty years ago, you had to look up information in a library on sheets of paper bound together and then sift through all those sheets just to find out the little piece of information you wanted to know. here if you want something it's like taking candy from a baby. and the baby doesn't even cry.

but the internet wasn't a chance occurence. looking through history, one can see it slowly creeping up on us out of the smog of the industrial revolution. the beginning of the change in the way we learn information came with the radio. with the radio, one had a choice of what kind of information was presented when.18R with a flip of the dial, a new person and a new subject was entertained. soon after came the television. now here was a revolutionary product. images of far away places came to life on the small screen and the world became a smaller place.

television is a staple in households all over the world. it encapsulates everything. news, entertainment, politics, educational channels, even sports are available all hours of the day.4D,3C television is the most addictive drug on the market today. people pays hundreds of dollars a month to get satellite channels sent to their homes "for their viewing pleasure".

the television is a pretty heavy medium to influence people. information is readily available but it is still selective. you can only see what the producers want you to see.22T

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the television is the obvious precursor to the internet. since the invention of the computer in the 1950's, people have always wanted to heve a network connecting all of the computers. in the 1980's a web was created by the u.s. government which eventually expanded into the web we know today. so where odes this get us?

information is now endlessly accessible, whether we want it or not. have you ever played inside of alta vista or yahoo?1A,9I you can get a headache from the possibilities. i don't see this as a necessarily good thing. access to information usually breeds desire for more access. it also makes those who don't want ton upon ton of information to become frustrated with the medium. i don't really see a middle ground in sight as the web continually expands and more people have access to it. without the tactile medium of paper, words become so fragile. it becomes easier to deconstruct narrative and argument.14N people begin to learn differently, as perception is replacing experience.5E could this mean dependence for younger people as they age in the epoch of information? computers are already a part of everyday life.