Reading about the gadgets in the Diamond Age is like experiencing any of the other new mediums through which we've read/experienced literary forms in this class. I always have to understand the gadget by likening it to a form I already know and then branching off from there, in the same way that we can't seem to read new media without thinking of our experiences with the novel. The Primer is of course the most advanced hypertext novel that could exist. Don't know the definition of the word you're reading? You look it up on www.m-w.com. the Primer hooks these pages together, but only opens up the dictionary when you command it to. Not only that, but the Primer is like youtube and pandora because it analyzes our interface so far and picks out other things we might like. It's the most flexible hypertext possible. The ractive part of it is like any video game where you have room to walk around and explore (for some reason I thought of Zork more than Halo or any other modern video game).

Somehow though, I keep conceptualizing all the gadgets as combinations of extensions of gadgets I already know and use. What is the point at which a gadget switches from being defined through previous inventions, and becomes something that is understood on its own?