The most pervasive characteristic of hypermedia in IMM and the WWW is
   the node which:

• consists of chunks of text or other media

• is the basic unit of information storage

• consists of a page of text, a graphic, a sound bite, a video clip, an interaction with or without feedback, or even an entire document

• can be accessed in ways that depend upon the learner's/user's interests or needs

• can be amended or modified by the learner (in the WWW but not in IMM packages). In these, the learner may add to, delete, or change the information in a node or create his/her own unique nodes of information.

In short, and particularly in the WWW, hypermedia can be a dynamic knowledge base that continues to grow, representing new and different points of view.

The organization of a hypermedia knowledge base, that is, the inter-relationships between the nodes, is defined by the links that interconnect the nodes.

Links in hypermedia, systems are typically associative, i.e., they describe associations between the nodes they connect.

The node structure and the links structure form a network of ideas in the knowledge base; the structures and networks may be very rich in the number of links and type of media used.

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