Introduction to Multimedia Technology

A complex weave of communications, electronics, and computer technologies is emerging to create a new multimedia fabric for the next decade. The nature of this cloth is still evolving as an assortment of industries-telecommunications, consumer electronics, computers, cable and broadcast television, and information providers-compete for the emerging market. The potentially biggest near-term market will be the home and consumer, as recent developments such as consumer-oriented computer products, interactive television, and video-on-demand suggest. However, in time many expect the new technologies to be as pervasive as today’s television and telephone and the impact to reach to the sum of computers, telecommunications, and electronics, touching all parts of society from industry to government, education to recreation.
The concepts behind what is emerging today date back to over four decades to a series of visionary thinkers who foresaw the evolution of computers towards richer personalised devices that would become an extension of the individual. In 1945 Vannevar Bush, then the Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development in the U.S. government, suggested, that one of the future devices available for individuals would be a memex, “a device in which one stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanised so that it can be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.” The memex would additionally be an associative device, so that related items could be easily located.
Multimedia Systems
Multimedia technology is breaking down the traditional boundaries between devices for computing, personal communications, and consumer entertainment. Major industries are rethinking their market strategy and forming a web of new alliances connecting entertainment, telecommunications, computing, publishing, and other global enterprises. Multimedia devices are expected to replace ubiquitous appliances such as the telephone and television and change many of the activities associated with them. The large scale of these trends and the many participants in these developments has added to the complexity of the possibilities. This chapter provides a contemporary account of the major technology forces affecting this convergence and identifies the significant near-term issues that lie ahead.