Text that are hyper!

15 years on and the impact hypertext on the world is nothing short of phenomenal. From the orignal use in academic insitutions, internet has branched out to many other ares like sports, games, news, personal websites. The internet is widely touted to be an interactive media, but to me i feel that most of internet usage is a one-way interactive media.

This is because i feel that while the media is somewhat interactive, information is generally transmitted one-way. An interactive medium should be a simultaneous engagement of different users, but the truth is that the Internet has many artificial limits set upon it so much so that it is for the most part a one-way medium. For example, in China, where net censorship is practised, many chinese are not given the full picture on issues.

Also I feel that the internet have increasingly become similar to any other media, in which information is broadcasted to us, rather than being an interactive media. I liken the clicking on each new link, bringing us to new data as being similar to the changing of channles on a cable tv.

However, even so, the internet is a wonderful invention. There is almost definately a topic on anything at all on the net, thus anyone can easily use the internet to search for the things they are researching on. However we will need to be aware that the information might not be accurate. This is because anyone who has access to the internet can write on any topic at all. Thus while making the internet accessible to everyone, we need the users to be responsible for them.