William Horton http://www.horton.com is an internationally recognised expert on the productive and appropriate use of new media and communications technologies. He was recently the keynote speaker at the International TLM Users Conference, Gatlingburg, Tennnessee, USA, 8 April 2003 http://www.thelearningmanager.com and his topic was extremely provocative based around Horseless-Carriage Thinking.
 
New media often evoke responses more appropriate to old media. Designers treat new media as slight refinements of the old media they are comfortable with. This response is called horseless-carriage thinking after the fact that early automobiles were little more than horse-drawn buggies with the horse removed from the front and an engine bolted on underneath.

Because of horseless-carriage thinking, most Web pages provide little more than TV pictures of paper pages, much online training is a grainy postage stamp of a talking head, and many e-zines are as static as their 18th century progenitors. The means of transmission have drastically changed, but the design and use of the media have barely begun to exploit these new delivery technologies.

Such technologies radically redefine the fundamental relationships between the architects and consumers of information. As a result, information architects face design issues without precedent. They must acquire new skills and develop entirely new models. This presentation explores how hardworking innovators are breaking through horseless-carriage thinking to invent entirely new media.

The basis of William Horton's thoughts, originally published in 2000, has equal relevance today.

Go to http://www.designingwbt.com/content/hct/hct.pdf for further details