Did
You Know...
What
is Multimedia?
The word “multimedia” derives from the Latin “multum”
(meaning ‘much’, or ‘greatly’) and “medium”
(meaning ‘everyday life’, ‘the common good’,
or ‘the public eye’).
Multimedia
is media that uses multiple forms of information content and information
processing (eg. text, audio, graphics, animation, video, interactivity)
to inform or entertain.
Multimedia
also refers to the use of (but not limited to) electronic media
to store and experience multimedia content.
History
of the term
The term “multimedia” was used to describe the Exploding
Plastic Inevitable - a series of events organised by Andy Warhol
between 1966 and 1967, featuring musical performances by The Velvet
Underground and Nico, screenings of Warhol's films and dancing
and performances by regulars of Warhol's Factory.
In
the intervening 40 years the word has taken on different meanings.
In the late 1970s the term was used to describe presentations
consisting of multi-projector slide shows timed to an audio track.
In
the 1990s it took on its current meaning. In common usage the
term multimedia refers to an electronically delivered combination
of media including video, still images, audio, text in such a
way that can be accessed interactively. Much of the content on
the web today falls within this definition as understood by millions.
Which
brings us neatly to the Internet itself. Now how did that come
about?
A
brief history of the Internet
The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio and computer
set the stage upon which researchers in the 1940s developed many
of the principles used to build the Internet.
The
Internet began as a Cold War project to create a communications
network that was immune to a nuclear attack. In 1969, the US government
created ARPANET, connecting four western universities and allowing
researchers to use the mainframes of any of the networked institutions.
New
connections were soon added to the network, bringing the number
of “nodes” up to 23 in 1971; 111 in 1977; and 4 million
in 1994.
Today
the Internet is so vast it is impossible to calculate the number
of nodes, but total human usage globally is estimated at between
922 million and 1,032 million.
As
the size of the network has grown, so has its capabilities. In
its first 25 years, the Internet added features such as file transfer,
email, Usenet news and, eventually, HTML.
Now,
new developments come to the Net one right after the other - and
it is this explosive growth in recent years that has captured
the imagination of computer users the world over.
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