Interactive is a new buzzword, but its sense is ancient, a lot more ancient than that of the telephone or telegraph. The interesting scientific question now is: How long have people been using words and sentences to communicate with each other? Humans are not a passive animal; they are very communicative.

The only 100% interactive (audio) technology remains today as it was at its beginning in 1875: the telephone—if interactive means truly equal two-way or multiple-way communication. Telegraphy, however, offers even more parallels with today's world than the telephone. It prefigured a major nonaudio trend in our current interactivity: computer nets which range from those used in local libraries and college classrooms to the worldwide Internet. All these, like the telegraph, use digital coding, not analog words.

The interactivity of e-mail and bulletin boards has contributed greatly to the popularity of the Internet. Mail or telephone communications...