Hands-On: A 1995 Snapshot of the Evolution of Interactive Multimedia

When the First International Conference on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums was being organized in 1991, the concept of interactive multimedia systems was equivalent to single workstation kiosks with drives that read videodisks or the new CD-ROM technologies. The debates of the day were about whether digital or analog storage provided better assurance for the future and about how best to install the kiosks within museum exhibits. By the 1993 conference the focus had shifted to CD-ROM publications, reflecting the widespread sales of computers with CD-ROM drives and the victory of digital over analog. The debates that raged hottest were about intellectual property and about distribution avenues. Here we are two years later and we find the focus of the ICHIM Conference has shifted again. This time the emphasis is on remote access to interactive multimedia, made possible in the past year by the explosion of the World Wide Web which didn't even exist when we held our meeting in 1993.