2 Chapter 1 The Multimedia Revolution
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke
Multimedia computing has produced a revolution. We shop, study, research, play, and
communicate differently because of it. Like other advanced technologies, multimedia is,
as Clarke would say, magical.
How else should we describe a little box, which gets smaller but more powerful each
year, and which pours forth an endless stream of words and sounds of pictures and
movies? The multimedia computer captures all manner of worldly experience and even
presents us with worlds of its own.
As dramatic as the impact of multimedia has been, its story is far from finished. We
have good reason to anticipate ever more ...