A further service such a network could provide would be to suggest what courseware or other material a particular user might like to explore next. These suggestions would be based on what material other similar users found to be satisfying. Thompson has suggested that a consequence of widespread use of computer-aided learning on videotex might be the replacement of phonetic writing, in which symbols represent sounds, by ideographic writing, in which symbols represent visual images. Phonetic alphabets arose as an economical means for people to learn to read by mastering relatively few rules of symbol-sound correspondence. Virtually all technologies are double-edged, and videotex is no exception.
Some potential problems relate to privacy, information pollution, and alienation.
People will be concerned that information regarding their videotex behaviour will fall into the wrong hands. New sophisticated techniques can make it prohibitively expensive for unauthorized people to access databases. One approach is to let the free market of information prevail and leave the users to separate the wheat from the chaff, with assistance from word of mouth. A better alternative would be to have a body or bodies, analogous to Consumers Union, that would systematically provide evaluations of available courseware and other material. In a videotex Utopia, a user could input the name of a subject she wanted to learn, and receive a list of available courseware on that subject along with a description, and evaluations, by experts and by users, of each course.