All products of information technology —paintings and poems, novels and newspapers, movies and music — have been static since our ancestors first scratched diagrams in the dirt or pressed visions of their world on the walls of caves. Other human hands could add or destroy, but the products of our hands could do nothing but decay, prey to the scorching sun, the worm, or the slow fires of acid within. We can direct our questions to the written word or to the most lifelike painting, but we can expect only silence. Now, however, we have created cultural products that can respond, systems that can change and adapt themselves to our needs.

http://www.zotero.org/coffee001/items/22960957