The World on a Screen

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

Some technologies seem fated to succeed. The telephone. The automobile. The electronic computer. Each offered advantages over its predecessors so compelling that failure, in retrospect, seems almost unimaginable.

Now the same aura of inevitability has attached itself, at least in some circles, to a technology known as interactive multimedia. It is a broad term -- and one that most certainly needs a catchier moniker -- that encompasses a variety of systems for bringing information, music, voice, animation, photos and video images together on a screen in people's living rooms and workplaces. Multimedia represents the coalescence of three key communications technologies: television, personal computers and laser storage systems like the videodisc and the compact disc. These technologies are on a collision course, say multimedia enthusiasts, and when they merge, life as we know it will never be the same.

As if to underscore those predictions, technology watchers are being treated this month to an unprecedented burst of multimedia-related activity. Last week representatives of more than 70 high-tech firms, led by Microsoft and Tandy, gathered at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City to unveil the Multimedia PC (MPC), a souped-up personal computer that can play games, video and interactive programs stored on silver discs that look like audio CDs. Prices start at $2,800 -- or about $800 more than an ordinary PC. One week earlier, former archrivals Apple and IBM revealed plans to start a joint venture, Kaleida, charged with designing their own version of multimedia computers.

This week the Dutch electronics giant Philips will unveil its Compact Disc Interactive system, also called CD-I, a $1,000 computerized CD player that can be hooked up to a standard TV set to play all manner of games and run interactive programs. Five years in the making, the VCR-size unit joins CDTV, | a similar machine that was introduced by Commodore in January, and CD-ROM, a system for playing CDs on Apple and IBM-compatible personal computers. Even Nintendo has announced plans to attach a compact-disc drive to the latest version of its video-game machine. "After years of public relations hype," says David Bunnell, publisher of a start-up magazine called NewMedia, "multimedia finally is for real."

Or is it? For all the hoopla and claims of inevitability, interactive multimedia is still far from a sure thing. None of the devices that have arrived in U.S. stores so far can be called a hit. And the multiplicity of gadgets is sure to be confusing to consumers. Every new technology has its growing pains; the early years of the computer -- and even the automobile -- were littered with setbacks, false starts and skepticism. For multimedia, the road ahead may be even bumpier.

No one doubts that the basic idea behind the technology is a powerful one. Television has demonstrated an uncanny ability to grab a viewer's attention, but it remains a quintessentially passive medium. The personal computer is a highly interactive tool for searching through vast quantities of data, but until now it has been restricted largely to manipulating dry text and numbers. And thanks to the popularity of laser-based media, videodiscs and compact music discs have become the cheapest method ever devised for storing information. The same shiny Mylar CD that holds 72 minutes of crisp digital sound can be used to store more than half a gigabyte of computer data -- roughly 300,000 pages of text -- and yet can be stamped out for less than $1.

Futurists describe the ultimate multimedia machine as a device that would sit in an office, den or schoolroom and do all the things today's media do -- play music, movies, games -- while also providing viewers with the functional equivalent of a joy stick to pursue their own interests or needs. People could buy discs on everything from the Civil War to the Persian Gulf war, from child rearing to quantum physics, which would provide words, sound and video pictures at the viewer's command.

Want to know more about something you heard on the news? A few clicks on an electronic mouse would call to the screen a selection of wire-service stories, background articles and reports from a library of videotapes. Need a quick briefing on Einstein's general theory of relativity? A few more clicks would retrieve not just the text of his writings but also charts, films and computer simulations that would bring those words and formulas to life.

While today's machines offer aspects of the interactive multimedia experience, none of them deliver anything close to this vision of the future. Problems begin with the compact disc as a storage device. Because CDs were designed to store music, not pictures or computer information, their data- retrieval rates are limited. Users find that there is often an annoying pause while the CD drive fetches a new screenful of information -- giving the machines a sluggish quality that people used to the furious pace of TV shows and video games may deem unacceptable. "Let's face it," says Denise Caruso, editor of the newsletter Digital Media, "the disc drives are just too slow."

A bigger problem is that most of the competing devices are incompatible. With the exception of the MPC, which has the cooperation of a dozen hardware manufacturers, a disc purchased to play on one company's machine will not play on the others. This breeds the kind of confusion and consumer resistance that characterized the early days of the computer and VCR industries. Some analysts believe a multimedia shakeout is inevitable. Yet there is widespread optimism in the computer and entertainment camps that these problems will be solved, if not by the next generation of CD players, then sometime in the not so distant future when homes and offices begin to receive massive quantities of digital information through their phone lines or cable-TV systems.

Meanwhile, a surprising number of companies are developing programs to run on the current machines. Among them are reference-book publishers like Britannica and Grolier, magazine publishers like Time Warner and National Geographic, film companies like Lucasfilm and Disney, electronics manufacturers like Sony, Fujitsu and NEC, as well as a long list of software publishers.

Today there are hundreds of multimedia videodiscs and CDs for sale or in development. Most are fairly straightforward elaborations of products already available as books or on traditional computer disks. But some of them take advantage of the power of the new media to achieve extraordinary results. Among the best are a series of videodiscs from ABC News InterActive that allow users to explore subjects like the AIDS epidemic or the life of Martin Luther King Jr. by roaming though film and video clips culled from ABC's extensive library of news footage. In some cases, these clips are supplemented by printed matter, so that someone interested in King's "I have a dream" speech can not only see a film of the speech and read its text but can also call up background information on everything from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to relevant Bible passages.

But good interactive multimedia can be fiendishly expensive to produce. Development costs for a typical title start at a quarter-million dollars. IBM this week will unveil the most ambitious -- and expensive -- multimedia project ever attempted: an elaborate exploration of Columbus' world created by former Hollywood filmmaker Robert Abel that took more than a year and some $5 million to produce. Packed with 180 hours worth of slickly polished text, art, music and video sequences (among them an interview with one of the explorer's living descendants), the program, which will sell for about $3,000, takes pains to represent a wide variety of viewpoints, including those of blacks and Native Americans.

Multimedia programs like this are likely to be enthusiastically received in America's schools, which for all their complaints about financial problems seem to have plenty of cash to spend on new educational technologies. The state of Florida has contracted with ABC News and National Geographic to develop multimedia programs on subjects ranging from the environment to the cold war. This fall more than 500,000 Texas schoolchildren began using a videodisc series, Optical Data Corp.'s Windows on Science, in lieu of a standard textbook, as their first formal introduction to science. William Clark, president of Optical Data, argues that the multimedia approach may be necessary to reach children raised on Sesame Street and MTV. Says he: "We have to teach a literacy appropriate to the times we live in."

Some critics are not so sure. While conceding that interactive multimedia may prove useful in helping students visualize abstract concepts in physics or math, many fear that the tools of multimedia will turn the traditional educational experience into something more akin to television. Author Steven Levy, writing in Macworld magazine, insists that the ability to express oneself in words and to understand the words of others is essential to the process of thinking. "But multimedia laughs at that objection," he writes, "because multimedia, like television, is designed to entertain, at the cost of thinking."

In the end, interactive multimedia will succeed, at least at some level, ! because for certain purposes it makes good sense. In the business world, it is already being embraced as a tool to train workers in such complex skills as aircraft maintenance and computer repair. But multimedia still lacks what computer companies call the "killer application," a program like the electronic spreadsheet or the word processor that is so compelling that consumers will buy a new device just to run it. As Marshall McLuhan pointed out, every new medium takes its content from its predecessor: early films were simply recorded stage plays; the first TV shows were converted radio dramas. The same is probably true of this newest medium, which represents the merger of all its predecessors. At the moment, interactive multimedia is a powerful tool whose best uses remain on the horizon.

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CREDIT: TIME Graphic by Joe Lertola

CAPTION: MARRYING TVs, CDs AND PCs