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technology has always been used to make media. George Lucas
shot his latest Star Wars epic with digital cameras, though
the audience experience was no different than if it had been
shot on celluloid. But while not all computer-based media is
multimedia, today's multimedia starts with the computer, and
takes the greatest advantage of the computer's capability for
personal expression.
Digital
computers were initially designed as calculating machines. The
first fully electronic computer, the ENIAC, was built by the
U.S. military during World War II to produce ballistics tables
for artillery in battle. Computers then were clumsy,
hulking devices – the ENIAC had 18,000
vacuum tubes, and measured 50 x 30 feet – that did calculations
for scientific research. Only a handful of scientists considered
the possibility of personal computing for creative purposes
by non-specialists.
The
first scientist to think seriously of this potential was Vannevar
Bush. In his 1945 article "As We May Think," he outlined
"a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized
private file and library." Before the ENIAC was completed, Bush
was already contemplating how information technology could enhance
the individual's capability for creative thought. "The human
mind... operates by association," Bush observed. The device
that he proposed, which he named the Memex, enabled the associative
indexing of information, so that the reader's trail of association
would be saved inside the machine, available for reference at
a later date. This prefigured the notion of the hyperlink. While
Bush never actually built the Memex, and while his description
of it relied on technology that predated digital information
storage, his ideas had a profound influence on the evolution
of the personal computer.
In
the years immediately after the War, under the shadow of the
atomic bomb, the scientific establishment made a concerted effort
to apply recent advancements in technology to humanitarian purposes.
In this climate, Norbert Wiener
completed his groundbreaking theory on cybernetics. While Wiener
did not live to see the birth of the personal computer, his
book, The Human Use of Human Beings, has become de rigeur for
anyone investigating the psychological and socio-cultural implications
of human-machine interaction. Wiener understood that the quality
of our communication with machines effects the quality of our
inner lives. His approach provided the conceptual basis for
human-computer interactivity and for our study of the social
impact of electronic media.
Bush
and Wiener established a foundation on which a number of computer
scientists associated with the Advanced Research Projects Agency
(ARPA)– a U.S. government funded program to support defense-related
research in the1960sÑbegan to build. Leading ARPA's effort to
promote the use of computers in defense was the MIT psychologist
and computer scientist J.C.R.
Licklider, author of the influential article "Man-Computer
Symbiosis." Defying the conventional wisdom that computers would
eventually rival human intelligence, rather than enhancing it,
Licklider proposed that the computer be developed as a creative
collaborator, a tool that could extend human intellectual capability
and improve a person's ability to work efficiently.
While
at ARPA, Licklider put significant resources towards the pursuit
of his vision. Among the scientists he supported was Douglas
Engelbart, who since the mid-1950s had been seeking support
for the development of a digital information retrieval system
inspired by Bush's Memex. APRA funding enabled Engelbart to
assemble a team of computer scientists and psychologists at
the Stanford Research
Institute to create a "tool kit" that would, as he phrased
it, "augment human intellect." Dubbed the oNLine
System (NLS), its public debut in 1968 at the Fall
Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco was a landmark
event in the history of computing. Engelbart unveiled the NLS
before a room of 3,000 computer scientists, who sat in rapt
attention for nearly two hours while he demonstrated some of
his major innovations, including the mouse, windows for text
editing, and electronic mail. Engelbart was making it possible,
for the first time, to reach virtually through a computer's
interface to manipulate information. Each of his innovations
was a key step towards an interface that allowed for intuitive
interactivity by a non-specialist. At the end of his presentation,
he received a standing ovation.
However, the contributions of the
NLS went beyond innovation regarding the computer interface.
Engelbart and his colleagues also proposed that creativity could
be enhanced by the sharing of ideas and information through
computers used as communications devices. The oNLine System
had its computers wired into a local network, which enabled
them to be used for meaningful collaboration
between co-workers. Engelbart understood that the personal computer
would not only augment intelligence, but augment communication
as well. In 1969 his research in on-line networking came to
fruition with the creation of the Internet.
Engelbart's
NLS pioneered some of the essential components necessary for
the personal computer, but it would be up to a new generation
of engineers to advance computing so it could embrace multimedia.
As a graduate student in the late 1960s, Alan
Kay wrote a highly influential Ph.D. thesis proposing a
personal information management device that, in many ways, prefigured
the laptop. In 1970, as research in information science was
shifting from East Coast universities and military institutions
to private digital companies in Silicon Valley, Kay was invited
to join the new Xerox
PARC in Palo Alto. PARC's mandate was no less than to create
"the architecture of information for the future."
At PARC, Alan Kay conceived
the idea of the Dynabook
– a notebook sized computer that enabled hyperlinking,
was fully interactive, and integrated all media. With the Dynabook,
digital multimedia came into being. Echoing Licklider, Engelbart
and colleagues at PARC, Kay declared the personal computer a
medium in its own right,. It was a "meta-medium," as he described
it in his 1977 essay "Personal Dynamic Media," capable of being
"all other media." While the Dynabook remained a prototype that
was never built, the work that came from its development, including
the invention of the Graphical User
Interface (GUI) and subsequent breakthroughs in dynamic
computing, was incorporated into the first true multimedia computer,
the Xerox Alto.
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