Computers have gained new abilities as the cost of processing power has declined. The old mainframe computers could never handle data that required constant attention at very high speed. Even if an IBM System 360 had the processing power, it wasn't built for high speed input/output. The computer I'm working on now is tiny, but can accept video and sound signals for viewing, storage, and processing without much effort on my part. CD-ROMs make it possible to transfer large amounts of information in all of its various forms and suddenly media designers have been given a new tool, a tool they don't seem to know how to use quite yet.The range and capacity of the new technologies has raised a host of legal questions about how fair use might be construed. The technology has made it all very easy, once the user has made a fairly sizable first investment. The existence of multimedia is a threat to its predecessors, threatening analog arts with digital obsolescence. The public seems amused by multimedia, and there's certainly money available - so I think we'll be seeing more, not less development in this newborn field.
This file created with Hypertype 2.2 by Simon St.Laurent