Multimedia is a powerful paradigm, for it provides a multisensory experience, engaging us and communicating to us in a way that text alone cannot. The Multimedia paradigm has now become a foundational paradigm, often in fusion with other paradigms such as hypertext. When it is fused with augmenting paradigms such as hypertext and interactivity to form interactive hypermedia, and used effectively, it is powerful paradigm for communicating complex information.

 However, if fused to a limiting paradigm, such as the print paradigm, it will fall short of its potential. Even worse, if multimedia is used with no thought as to the reasons why it is being used, or has poor layout or content it can result in a pointless aesthetic fiasco that needlessly hogs bandwidth.

 While in the long-run, multimedia in fusion with other augmenting paradigms will provide us with an extremely rich and powerful information environment, we are still, in the short-run, crippled by the physical bandwidth generally available. We continue to be crippled, even with T1, with a lack of bandwidth. The ultimate potential of multimedia will not be reached until we have fibre to the home and full virtual reality information environments.

 We are also crippled with the rather anal, print-based, copyright laws. We need more liberal copyright laws if we are to be free to experiment with innovative repurposing and bricolage, as well as to see the WEB become a true Docuverse.

 Click here for a list of background reading in multimedia and interactive hypermedia.