:: Interactive Multimedia

Interactive multimedia involves people communicating with people, aided by machines. It is more than just people interacting with machines. Certainly interactive multimedia requires a digital intermediate form to be established for content derived from any medium, be it text, data, audio, graphics, or video animation. In its current state of development, IMM products mainly appear as CD-ROM discs that are played on personal computers with colour screens, sound cards, hard disk and CD-ROM drives. However, IMM is fast becoming network based, using global data networks that link computer with computer, and thus user with user.

Most importantly, interactive multimedia products define both the content and the context in which the user can find, manipulate and interpret informative, educational and entertaining material. The power of presenting content in this way to a user is as much in the associations and relationships, and the logic of interaction between users and the material, as it is in the notion of "more than one medium". We find leading examples of such power in the entertainment worlds of computer games and virtual reality today, which can also be exponents of enjoyable learning and information-rich experiences