A look at the internet, war and hypertext
Jomo Fray '10, English 65, The Cyborg Self, Brown University (Fall 2006)
The internet has now become the cyber battlefield. The net is based on deception and covert takeover. Hierarchies are created on the net and companies have in a sense battled over user viewing. In this era, the internet is the new battleground and different sites are the fighters. In this day and age the mammoth size of the internet is much too daunting for the average user to approach without a plan of attack. This phenomenon creates a much larger sphere of dominance for the larger sites. Many users will opt not to go to "Joe's civil war page" when they can utilize the history channel's website instead. The magnitude of choices has facilitated a hierarchy on the net. Larger more popular sites dominate the net directing where other users are thrown. Thus the user finds himself/herself only viewing 40% of the net's resources. The net has slowly started to evolve and revolve around sites like Google; sites that are built on promoting capitalism through this new mode of communication. Just as print was "back in the day" a media form used for economic gain, similarly the web has become the new economic machine. The weapons the web implements are a skewed sense of time , space , and choice to deceive the user into believing they are in fact in control of their viewing options, but much like in war and a game of tact the enemy's goal is to deceive the other.
I have created a hypertext tactical learning scenario in hopes of utilizing many of the webs inherently deceptive tricks to give the user some more control than he/she may be used to and to hone their tactical skill and know-how on battle. Hypertext leads itself well to viewing tactical procedures due to hypertext's ability to provide many different branches on a situation where conventional text can not.
Last modified 31 December 2006