Briefly discuss the history and future of multimedia. How might multimedia be used to improve the lives of its users? How might it influence users in negative ways? What might be its shortcomings?

Brief History

The term "multimedia" was introduced by Bob Goldstein to promote the July 1966 opening of his "LightWorks at L'Oursin" show at Southampton, Long Island. In the 1993 first edition of McGraw-Hill’s Multimedia: Making It Work, Tay Vaughan declared “Multimedia is any combination of text, graphic art, sound, animation, and video that is delivered by computer. Multimedia is technology, content, applications, and people. It encompasses many concepts and ideas that are important to understand. Multimedia is incorporating two or more of the following elements:

(a) Sound

(b) Text

(c) Pictures

(d) Animation

Future of Multimedia

History has proven that advances in communication like the migration from radio to TV, marks a whole new era of communication by using multimedia which combines text, sound and images.

Implementation of multimedia for today and the future reflect the innate desire of man to create outlets for creative expression, to use technology and imagination to gain empowerment and freedom for ideas that will propel all of us into a better world.  

The future of multimedia will depend mostly on the development of current technology Which will include high band – width access to a wide range of multimedia resources. It is absolutely important to many fields especially education, business, entertainment, communications, public places and in medical field. In this technology advanced environment, many multimedia tools are involved when organising the events or activities such as lecture in class, open ceremony, seminar, presentation and others that may combine all forms of media content. For instance, multimedia is used to produce computer-based training course and reference books like encyclopedia and almanacs in education field; multimedia is used to develop special effects in movies and animations in the entertainment industry; and multimedia is used in future for worldwide voice and video communication (eg: internet telephone and video phone system). As we can see, the impact of multimedia technology on our daily lives is often more than what we realize and expect. The future of multimedia online is at present, video is rather primitive, but in future users will be able to interact visually with people from all over the world. Multimedia do not replacing human contact; rather, it will supplement it by allowing users to interact in ways and places that would otherwise be impossible and same goes to other elements of multimedia. 

2:

A: How might multimedia be used to improve the lives of its users?

In my opinion, multimedia can improve the lives of users in its applications.

·         Firstly, multimedia is used as a common source of reference. Encyclopedias, directories, dictionaries and electronic books are among common multimedia references. Multimedia is also used in education and training. The application of multimedia make the learning has become more interesting and effective with educational programmes. Besides that, as I mentioned as above, entertainment industry produce computer games, and develop animations or special effects for cartoons and movies

·         multimedia applications also used widely in scientific research to improve the condition of sick people. In medicine field, doctors can practice or be trained in performing high-risk surgery by using virtual surgery. 

·         multimedia applications have greatly benefited those with low vision as it helps them in performing tasks normally in their daily lives. Therefore, for those users who have vision problems, they can use the multimedia for their educational and rehabilitation program to improve their standard of living.

B: How might it influence users in negative ways?

In spite of the numerous ways in which it can improve the life of its users, multimedia also might influence users in negative ways.

·         Nowadays, there are a lot of people use the multimedia invention and advanced technology in the wrong ways. For instance, due to the multimedia tools available, peoples can now edit pictures of prominent people, politicians etc and publish it just to tarnish their reputation.

·         Other people can also use their smart phone or camera to record some incident that happened around them and publish the video to 'Facebook' or 'YouTube' which is a way to violating human being right. Besides violating the victim's privacy, this kind of unethical action also may affect their personal dignity.

·         In addition, the advanced multimedia software ( eg: Photoshop, Dreamweaver and etc) help the users to edit, cut or merge the real picture in order to create the fake story which can affect personal image. A typical example is when someone edited the picture of the president of Ghana in a very devastated manner just for mischievous reasons.

C: What might be its shortcomings?

·         Multimedia may for some reasons cannot reach in certain areas because lack of technology, lack of internet connection or low bandwidth. Thus, some of the people cannot access to multimedia.

·         multimedia invention might always be misuse by some unmoral organizations when competes to get something. False news was made and spread by someone based on ‘edited picture’ through Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) or other web resources.

·         multimedia invention might always be misuse by society and organizations. For example, the negative effects of addiction are portrayed through advertisements. Newspapers, television or even the Internet are used to convey or transmit the social messages to people but ended up the messages are reaches the masses in the wrong way. Therefore, there is another shortcoming that positively influenced by the media while there are others who take the wrong message from it.