Many proponents of hypermedia point to it as being a much more interactive, and therefore much more immersive, medium than more traditional linear media, such as television and print. However, the incarnation of hypermedia in the World-Wide Web is surprisingly non-interactive. In its basic form, the Web lets you do little more than read pages and click on links. How is this different from using your remote control to flip between channels (particularly now that modern television services provide an electronic channel guide with links)? However, you must realize that the basic Web is not all that hypermedia can be. In more advanced hypermedia systems (and even in some documents on the web), readers have significantly more impact on the hypermedia documents they read. In what way can readers impact documents? * Documents might adapt themselves, based on explicit or implicit knowledge of the reader. * Readers might annotate documents, and even share those annotations with others. * Readers might contribute new nodes to a hypermedia document. * Readers might link nodes, within the hypermedia document, and between the hypermedia document and external documents.

===== History * Created Tuesday, March 22, 1999 with a few introductory paragraphs.