The Fiend of Hypertext or The Visualization of Inert Knowledge:

Hierarchies of Vision

Immediately, the use of images demotes any text into the category of "easily digestible" on the scale of intellectual challenge. This bias emerges in everything from children's picture books to the persisting insinuation that the image-influenced individual from a painter to a Macintosh user is at the least - devious, at the worst - severely lacking in mental acumen.

Textual language acts as the mediator of our culture, primarily, I believe, because images are not used consistently as a language in our culture. Not to say that such an occurrence is impossible, or even improbable, given the predominance of film and television as cultural dialogue; but to truly "speak" in images we will need to invest time and effort in learning and defining the unique qualities of the medium; much the same process that we will experience with the evolution of hypertext as it moves away from the dominance of the printed word.

Images have the potential to be as evocative as text, if not more so. Just as pieces of hypertext in the web can move beyond a state of massive knowledge lacking a cohesive concept, lacking associative knowledge - so images can also be formed into a cohesive language that can offer concept along with information. Hopefully, as the strengths and weaknesses of hypertext as a medium are further explored, its use will begin to effect, as well as reflect the way we perceive, and the way we think.