The Digital Research Initiative

Coming at you!

"Push" technolgies are those that require very little interaction with the user. For example, television is a push technology, because all the user has to do is turn it on and select a channel. The television and the television station takes care of the rest.

In contrast, the World Wide Web is a "pull technology," because the user has to constantly be pointing and clicking and adjusting things in order to get the full benefit from Web surfing.

Push programs essentially only need to be started and occassionally fine-tuned by the user. They allow the user to then simply watch their computer screens for information which is being served to them from computers across the Internet. These applications can be full-screen or very small, depending on their design. A common type of push program is the "news ticker" which provides brief headlines in a small box on the screen as the news comes into the parent service. If the user is interested in a particular headline, then are generally given a chance to click on it and see the full story.

The most popular push program is PointCast, which is a full-screen information-pushing system. Generally, people set the program to run as a screen saver, launching after a few minutes of no user activity and stopping when the mouse is moved. This has been a successful program in terms of getting into many harddrives, but as a screen saver, PointCast doesn't get much attention paid to it (Generally, if you are paying attention to your computer screen, your mouse is active.). Also, PointCast can be very cumbersome to get into and out of, which has made many people abandon it.

In 1996, many analysts predicted that push technology would be the dominant force on the Internet. Its advantages were more advertising opportunities for companies, but the downside is that interactivity would be lost online--the Internnet would just be more television channels. Fortunately, it seems the people want their interactivity, so push technologies, while still around today, have largely failed to take much away from the World Wide Web and other Internet services.

This site made by

This site was created especially for students of the UNC School of Journalism's
JOMC 050 Class, and anyone else who may be interested.
For more information, please contactdaikat@email.unc.edu