Chapter 1: History and Uses of Multimedia

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Chapter 1 History and Uses of Multimedia

• a multimedia presentation is fundamentally no
  different from any other form of human
  communication (p. 2)
• Multimedia is defined as an interactive
  computer-mediated presentation that includes at
  least two of the following elements text, sound,
  still graphic images, motion graphics, and
  animation
• Well extend this idea for this class
• To include tactile sensation (e.g., force
  feedback in a joystick), and possibly information
  to the other senses

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Multimedia

• Presentation controlled by a computer
• standard components
• Some necessary technologies
• Capture, Digitization, Storage
• Mixing, Synchronization
• Reproduction, Transmission
• Display of text, graphic, sound, and other data
• Viewers
• Presentation also involves attention to effective
  communication

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Human Communication - 1

• Have you have tried to communicate in real-time
  with just text words alone?
• Alternatively, what about talking to someone just
  over the phone?
• Do you find that something is missing?
• What is missing?
• What are the elements or aspects involved in
  human communication?

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Human Communication - 2

• Some elements of human communication
• Intonation
• Meaning
• Emotion
• Knowledge
• Feeling
• Body language
• Gesture

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Human Communication - 3

• Language
• Sound, gesture, writing
• Storytelling, Theatre, Teaching, Opera
• Movement gesture while telling a story
• Audience interaction (e.g., participation
  theatre)
• Effective communication
• Attention to your audience (the others) ,
  rather than to the communicator (the self)
• What does this mean?
• Attention to the content of your presentation
• actor using the audience to achieve the
  purpose of the presentation (p. 6)

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Presentations as

• Creating in an audience a desired transformation
• A gestalt blending of elements
• Illusion
• Creating an illusion in the mind of the audience

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Representation

• Humans have facility with understanding
  representations
• E.g., words are representations our minds form
  representations of the external world pictures
  are representations of reality
• Using some forms of media to stand for something
  else
• Theories of form and color from art
• Symbolism
• Using an item to represent something else
• E.g., film, music

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Historical Notes

• IBM 1500 (60s) Multimedia computer-assisted
  instruction
• DEC (60s, 70s) Link trainer virtual reality
  flight simulation
• 1991 World wide web
• 1992 first childrens interactive book title,
  Just Grandma and Me (see p. 9, lab text)
• Hardware Has made high real-time data rates
  feasible (see p. 14 for rate of change)
  sophistication of peripherals cost reductions
• Client/server computing
• One computer or process provides a service
  (server)
• The other computer or process uses this service
  (client)
• Why?

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Applications of Multimedia - 1

• Reference material
• Encyclopedias
• Dictionaries
• Entertainment
• Games
• Business
• Computer-assisted instruction (CAI),
  computer-based instruction (CBI)
• Teaching reading skills
• Underlying assumption?

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Underlying Assumption

• people learn more when they are actively engaged
  in the learning process, interacting with the
  instructional materials and exercising some
  control employing several different senses and
  enjoying entertaining presentations (p. 24)

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Applications of Multimedia - 2

• Medical scientific analyses, simulations,
  presentations
• E.g., Interactive scientific visualization
• The Visible Human Project
• Adaptive technology for the disabled
• multimedia is ideally suited for use in
  adaptive technologies, because if one medium is
  inaccessible to a potential user, another can be
  substituted (p. 28)
• Virtual reality
• Fine arts humanities

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Future Developments in Multimedia

• Improvements in artificial intelligence
• E.g., video processing to recognize faces,
  gestures
• E.g., animated characters (see Justine Cassells
  work at www.media.mit.edu)
• Computers vanishing into the background
• Wearable computing