I need to trust you on this. Please don't read the rest of this column
until you've signed the nondisclosure agreement.
Have you finished doing that?
Okay, good. Then I can tell you that I'm designing an educational
software package called HyperActiveLink, which will (1) transform the
ordinary lazy user of interactive technology into a hyperactive user,
(2) enhance multimedia technology's hyper delivery speed, and (3)
provide a linkage mechanism to weave every fact about the known universe
into one seamless and infinitely long chain of interconnectedness that
will keep a learner busy well into extreme old age.
As I see it, the trouble with most of the interactive technology
marketed today is that it's still much too slow, sometimes leaving the
learner alone for periods as long as ten seconds to contemplate a single
idea without having to consider some related idea. So, clearly, we need
HyperActiveLinksrather than ordinary hyperlinks. Ordinary hyperlinks are
not adequate, because the average learner simply cannot be counted on to
click on objects fast enough; as a result, precious learning time is
lost and the learner's ability to learn in the modern style is (to
choose my words carefully) disenhanced.
My solution to this problem is simple: Instead of relying on the learner
to double-click on things, I let things double-click on themselves. For
example, picture an elephant--but not for too long!--because (as you can
see) the elephant is double-clicking on himself and beginning to move
his feet, to make stereophonic sounds, and to chew on realistic cartoon
vegetables. All this is happening not only to prove that my software
development team can handle full-motion video but also to demonstrate
the direct causal linkage between vegetarianism and the huge size of
elephants.
As the elephant continues to chomp on his vegetables, the scene double-
clicks on itself so that the learner can understand the linkage between
vegetables and the various animals that eat them. And so the learner
sees different animals munching on various veggies. Then the animals
double-click on themselves to show the learner that not all animals are
vegetarians. Thus, for example, when the rabbit double-clicks on itself,
the rabbit's little throat is shown being torn apart by the incisors of
a fox. Not fun, but that's life. This ugly scene double-clicks on
itself, and the learner is HyperActiveLinkedquite naturally into a
tumultuous committee meeting in a hotel conference room. Still not fun.
At the committee meeting, the chairwoman double-clicks on herself and
reveals her true feelings about her committee members. Naturally, we
HyperActiveLinkthe learner away from that hornet's nest as quickly as we
can, and soon find ourselves listening to a committee member who,
pleading for socially responsible computer practices, double-clicks on
himself to reveal the terrified members of his own family. This is
another embarrassment--so we HyperActiveLink at once to the man's
college-age son in a typical college-age classroom. From there, a
succession of self-double-clicks guide the learner to a young man in a
prison library reading a psychedelic magazine about computers and rock
music, in pink and purple ink (far out!), Elton John, John Lennon
reminiscing about Elvis Presley, Elvis Presley joking with Ed Sullivan,
Ed Sullivan joking with the Beatles, a film clip from A Hard Day's
Night, the Dakota Hotel, the Central Park memorial for John Lennon, ice
skaters in the Central Park skating rink, Tonya Harding and Nancy
Kerrigan, the Olympic logo, Adolf Hitler, Jesse Owens, Jesse Jackson;
Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy,
Oliver Stone, the Mekong Delta, a Benetton advertisement, and so forth,
to infinity.
As you can see, I've designed a very exciting software package. All
those linkages! One idea, two ideas, three ideas! Ideas everywhere! All
the world's ideas connected in one seamless web!
Unfortunately, my wife is less impressed. "It's already been invented,"
she tells me.
"What do you mean?" I say, stunned. "Do you mean to tell me that
somebody else has already invented HyperActiveLink?"
"Not under that name," she admits; "but isn't what you're proposing
basically a system that subjects a person to an insane roller-coaster
ride through an infinite number of trivialized and sensationalized
images and events?"
"Exactly!" I say. "It's called Hyper-ActiveLink! It's the future! And I
invented it!"
"No," my wife informs me. "It's television. And you didn't invent it.
It's been around."
My wife has never been able to understand me, and now I find out that
she doesn't even understand the full potential of the Information
Superhighway.
Oh, well.
Only a few of us really do.
*John Gehl is editor and publisher of Educom Review. [email protected]