That’s edutainment!
If I stretch my brain back far enough, multimedia is watching a slide show in science class with accompanied sound from a tinny cassette player. The amphibian life cycle. What happens to your body during puberty. Big Bang Theory.
And technically, multimedia is TV. Sound plus pictures. The Carol Burnett Show! Who’s the Boss? But now so many other things have been added. What about those Chicago bus shelters this last December that Stove Top stuffing advertised in, the ones with radiant heat? And in San Fran, where the California Milk Processor Board put cookie-scented strips in bus shelters? That’s multimedia.
Multimedia means so much more than we realize. For me, it’s an entertaining way to learn and absorb news and other information. But when will one of our five senses be taken to the next level? Is Smell-O-Vision in our future? Probably not. And here’s the “duh” part of this blog post:
We have become too hard to reach, for advertisers, for journalists, for instructors, and we don’t respond well to a single medium. It has to be a graphic representation, or if need be, a pared-down version of a story. We are beginning to cater to a society that doesn’t read the same way our grandparents, or maybe even our parents did. Get me the info quick, because I have a busy life. And if pictures and sound and smells can get it to us quicker, I think we’ll be seeing a whole lot more of them.
