In earliest designs by my colleagues in the Writing Program for an electronic classroom that made full use of the wonderful communicative powers of computation we demanded chairs on rollers so that we could physically turn away from the magnetic presence of the monitor screen. Wihtout them there is merely the reconfiguration of data, the Lucretian bitstream without an anarchic movement to the side. The class has become quite popular at MIT and is regularly oversubscribed. It is reported that student projects have consistently pushed the envelope of Web technology and have received wide acclaim both within and outside the MIT community. As such it is an enlargement of traditional rhetoric and rhetorical spaces rather than a 'pushing' of the envelope of Web technology.
Technology is a wonderful thing, like indoor plumbing.
The Web currently suffers from terminal graphic design disease and back-end, programming hypertension. My students maybe learn what simplicity can accomplish, or at least how simplicity of purpose can dictate programmatic objectives. This program aims to develop an understanding of the historical, cultural and artistic significance of film and other modern media. I'm not sure anything is supposed to have significance, at least if you are talking about art. We may view digital media in an historical context but not to find some moral or significant sense of an evolution or progression.