Web documents vs interactive web

Rodrigo Tello

Should the web be documents or should it be interactive media?

It's a trick question, because neither is wrong nor right. I've gone back and forth during different periods of my life of what is the way.

When I was young, I really got inspired of the notion and evoekness of the web. The mataphors of links and webs, the hypertext notion, of it being a text but beyond, something that operates like text but moves and transports you across multiple dimensions. It's beautiful. The idea of it being document, a plain simple piece of paper but composed of pixels. It almost removes the complexity and pretentiousness of tech and just leaves the humbleness of writing to the front. More poetic.

When I started studying the work of Bret Victor and Alan Kay, my vision changed. I realized how computers were meant to be intearcitve and dynamic media. And how the web was actually a step backwards in all the things that were already accomplished.

Recently I've realized and come back to terms that the document nature of it its' beautiful. The world sharing documents with each other. Our modern world is built on documents, from constitutions, laws, agreements, contracts, political and art manifestos, architectural blueprints.