Predicting Obsolescence

I found Bolter's final claim concerning the future of MOOs in chapter 4 to be very interesting. He referred to a picture of The Palace MOO, and suggested that future MOOs would go further with video and animation in order to remediate film and television. It is interesting to note that not only have MOOs fallen out of favor, but its replacement--instant messaging and online chat--have gotten farther away from the visual and privelige the text, which is the opposite of what Bolter predicted in this chapter. Of course, I agree that visuals are incorporated more now on the Internet than ever before, but they seem to be in different areas. Visuals are prevalent in design and in hypertext, but other than image maps, do not seem to be interactive, at least to the extent Bolter predicts. The most interactive of internet spaces--chat rooms--rely almost exclusively on text. While graphics may shape and define the chat space, they are not interactive elements. One explanation for its obsolescence could be that the graphic MOO--like the one pictured on p. 76--was overly visual; perhaps graphics impeded the text communication. The MOO seems like a fascinating concept to explore; it would be interesting to question why its popularity never lasted.