The Evolution of MultimediaThis lesson is intended to provide an overview of the forms of media used in communication technology.
Media is any means of encoding and recording information such that another person can retrieve and decode the content. As part of creating a civilization people have always looked for a way to pass on or preserve their own knowledge and communicate their ideas. This has involved a lot of different forms…. Carvings on stone and clay tablets (ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, etc.). These were hard to work with and took time to create so only the most important documents were done. This sort of writing also appeared on building walls and other monuments. Writing on leather (skins) called Vellum. This type of document took time to make as it needed cleaning and tanning of animal hides and the development of inks to write with. Vellum documents could last for hundreds of years with the right environment to store them. Papyrus and reeds. Lighter and easier to work with. Faster to produce and easy to store however they couldn’t last as long as vellum and stone. The development of paper meant people could mass produce storage media. More information would be stored and more people would need to read and write in order to deal with the demand. This meant the spread of education from Rulers and a few choice scribes to most of the wealthy class along with the teachers and scientists of the society. Ideas were recorded and spread and civilization grew. Vinyl records storage. 19th century phonography made it possible to record sounds on vinyl tubes and disks.. Most commonly it was used for music and entertainment but were also used to record teachings and the ideas of the day |
Tape drive storage. In the 1950’s we learned how to store data on magnetic tape. This started years of technological development from the computer to 8-trax tapes and cassette tape recorders and then floppy disk drives. We could now store whole megabytes of information. For example, my first home computer was a Tandy Coco 2, which was made and sold by Radio Shack. My version of this was a computer with a color tv monitor attached and had a port to plug game cartridges directly into the computer, much like the Nintendo 64. It also had an option for a tape recorder to load programs. Every time you wanted to load a program or game you had to get the tape to the right place and press play after the computer was ready to receive the data. |
Metal disks.
The next step in development was the Hard disk. Being able to condense a lot of information onto solid metal plates. Refining this idea has allowed for storage of Gigabytes of information rather than bits and bytes and this is what we are currently using in most desktop and network computers.
Laser dish storage. These are what we call CD-Roms and Blue-Ray disks. Plastic disks with a metal foil on them that can be etched and then read by a laser beam. They were used for data storage but now are mainly used for music, movies and some gaming systems.
The difference between CD's, DVD's and Blue-Ray's is the type of laser that is used in the reader. The finer the laser, the more data that can be stored in the same space, making it possible to have larger software packages or more detailed videos on the one disk.
Solid state disk drives. The latest development in storage was needed in order to provide us all with our newest technology.. The smartphone.
Solid state devices have no moving parts and store information on computer chips such as you see on SD cards, in laptops and tablet computers, in ipods and ipads and of course in cell phones.
Media is also what is produced when technological resources are used to communicate. From teachings, to the recording of history, to the records of government, to works of literature and the forms of entertainment for a society. They are all the media that is saved and shared.
Multimedia is the field concerned with the computer controlled integration of text, graphics, drawings, still and moving images (video), animation, audio, and any other media where every type of information can be represented, stored, transmitted and processed digitally. In modern times this means using the various forms of modern media such as audio (i.e., music and voice), print (i.e., text, pictures and drawings) and moving images (i.e., video and movies).
Students should also understand the various uses of the term media such as mass media, multimedia, social media, and streaming media.
Multimedia is the field concerned with the computer controlled integration of text, graphics, drawings, still and moving images (video), animation, audio, and any other media where every type of information can be represented, stored, transmitted and processed digitally. In modern times this means using the various forms of modern media such as audio (i.e., music and voice), print (i.e., text, pictures and drawings) and moving images (i.e., video and movies).
Students should also understand the various uses of the term media such as mass media, multimedia, social media, and streaming media.
Assignment
Students must research a communication device / system in which they....
WHAT MEDIUM CAN YOU USE? This report may be completed in any way you want. It can be a poster, word document, presentation, animation, video, web page...virtually anything. It will be evaluated in terms of its design properties (layout, use of pictures, clarity, content, accuracy, depth of treatment, etc) SUGGESTED TOPICS:
HEADINGS OR SUB-TOPICS FOR THE TOPIC YOU CHOOSE:
In whatever medium you use, please use the following sub-headings:
HOW LONG DO YOU HAVE? This small project should be completed in a maximum of four (4) classes. Be sure to do preliminary research on a few topics and choose the one that you feel comfortable with so you don't lost time. |