Human communication has been evolving form oral, contunuing with literacy, to digital communication. Each media or mean is not better than the other but different ways of communication.
There is a variety of differences between each media which are the orality, the scripture or literacy and the digital media:
– Orality has been analysed by many authors. The main and the most important author is Walter Ong who analysed the differences between them in his work Orality and Literacy. Apart from this, orality is said to be direct and changeable since it is not written.
-Literacy is always connected with words and that is what we analyse. We analyse what is written down and how. Literacy is unchangeable and permanent.
– Digital media is always connected with texts, images and sounds. Digital media can be hypertext or hypermedia.
HYPERTEXT: text wich is not constrained to be linear. It contains links to other texts. The term was coined by Ted Nelson around 1965.
HYPERMEDIA: It is a term used for hypertext which is not constrained to be text: it can include graphics, video and sound, for example. Apparently Ted Nelson was the first to use this term too.
So the main difference between hypertext and hypermedia is that in hypertext the information can be presented using different medias or means such as videos, graphics, texts…
