Was pondering what media related news item, concept, or technology to write about and thought maybe I should just back away and write a bit about media itself.

Remember when multimedia meant a computer with two speakers and a cd-rom drive? Now my brother’s computer has seven speakers (no wait, it’s eight), and more ram on the video card then some computers have on their motherboard. Now we’ve gone from ‘multi-media’ to ‘new-media’ to ‘interactive-media’ to who know what else? It’s not just that cd-rom and speakers anymore.

The literal definition of multimedia is ‘media’ - a way to convey or present information - available in a variety of formats, or information being conveyed using multiple ‘media’ formats together. At least that’s the definition I give it.

For the media producer - essentially an information publisher - it gives both an incredible amount of information formats - ways to communicate - along with the ability to amplify the information by using those formats together. It also has brought this power to a large group of people. Yes there are large media outlets that control a great deal of what is seen, heard, read, answered, researched, and compared; however, at the same time much of the same media production power is available to smaller groups, even individuals.

Media is a very powerful thing - both in the hands of the big and powerful and the small and individual. It’s an amazing time we live in.