In Praise of "Unimedia"

by Steve Bennett

If "multimedia" in computerese refers to the dynamic combination of text, graphics, photos, videos, and sound, does that mean that books, paintings, and audio discs represent "unimedia?"Are movies and videotapes "semi-multimedia?" While it doesn't really matter what we label traditional media, what does matter is whether kids raised with multimedia learning tools will have the patience to read books, appreciate art, or listen to music without the trusty mouse to make the experience interactive (conventional movies are probably safe for a while).

I don't think anyone has the answer to that question now, but I, for one, don't recommend waiting until the experts speak. Why not balance your children's "media diets" with, say, two helpings of unimedia for each multimedia title consumed?

You can do this by encouraging your kids to find information in printed reference books and to read books in a linear fashion. Take them to see painting and other visual arts exhibitions, then discuss what you saw. Sit down together to enjoy music for its own sake. In other words, let your children's brains do the multimedia synthesizing -- our gray matter is wired for it.

Now, I'm not suggesting ditching your multimedia software library or abandoning plans to expand it; if anything, multimedia CD-ROM titles are getting better and better each year. Some of the better-produced educational and reference discs offer kids and grown-ups unique opportunities to make connections that are hard to come by with unimedia tools.

After viewing Encarta's animated explanation of the Doppler Effect, for instance, I was finally able to grasp a topic that's eluded me since my agonizing days of high school physics. The combination of reading, seeing, and hearing made the concept easy to understand.

Still, being an old fogy born in the fifties, my first impulse after "getting it" from the CD-ROM was to go back to a print source and read about it; I needed to validate that I really understood the concept. Also, there's just something fundamentally satisfying about feeling the wonderful "click" that comes from reading about something and seeing it with the mind's eye.

The bottom line is that unimedia and multimedia complement each other nicely, like soup and a sandwich. Anyway, the concept seems like good food for thought.

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