Are We Smarter Yet?

Like some early television pioneers, some early hypertext pioneers -- myself included -- were motivated by high hopes that the new media would make us smarter. That it would, in Doug Engelbart's famous phrase, "Augment the Human Intellect". Fifteen years into the web, I reflect on ways in which the modern world of hypertext has exceeded our hopes, on ways in which it disappoints, and on what steps to take from here.