What is multimedia?

Sound, images, graphics, text, etc. It is not accurate because it is easily confused with material media (also called media) that carry information for transmission and storage, such as electromagnetic wave, light, air waves, current, magnetic media and so on. Nowadays, however, the term multimedia is almost synonymous with words, graphics, images and sounds. In other words, most people think that multimedia is a combination of sound, image and graphics, so this inaccurate word has been used in general articles. At present, the popular multimedia concept mainly refers to a variety of information types that can be directly felt and understood by organs such as words, graphics, images and sounds, which has become a narrow understanding of multimedia.

In the field of computer and communication, what we mean by words, graphics, sounds, images and animations can all be called media. From the perspective of information processing by computers and communication equipment, we can classify the forms of original information in nature and human society-data, words, spoken language, sound, painting, animation and images (still photos and moving movies, television and video) into three basic media: sound, picture and text. Traditional computers can only deal with a single medium-"text", and television can spread information that integrates sound, picture and text, but it is not a multimedia system. Through TV, we can only passively accept information from one direction, but can't actively process information from two directions, so there is no so-called interactivity. Although videophone is interactive, we can only hear the sound and see the image of the speaker, and it is not multimedia. The so-called multimedia refers to the technology that can simultaneously collect, process, edit, store and display two or more different types of information media, including words, sounds, graphics, images, animations and moving images.

In daily life, there are many things called media, such as bees spreading pollen and flies spreading germs. But accurately speaking, these so-called "media" are communication media, not what we call "media" in multimedia, because these communication media are all some kind of material entities, while words, sounds, images and graphics are not material entities, they are only the superficial characteristics of some attributes of objective things, and they are a way of expressing information. What we call "media" in the field of computer and communication is the carrier of information storage, dissemination and expression, not the general media and media.

Conceptually speaking, "media" in multimedia should refer to a form of expressing certain information content. Similarly, we can know that the multimedia we refer to should be the expression of various information or the types of various information. Naturally, we can use the concept of multimedia information to represent comprehensive information types containing different information types, such as text information, graphic information, image information and sound information.

In a word, because the most essential concept of information is the superficial characteristics of objective things' attributes, and its manifestations are various, a more accurate and comprehensive definition of multimedia should refer to the synthesis of various information types.

These media can be graphics, images, sounds, characters, videos, animations and other forms of information expression, display devices such as monitors, speakers and televisions, intermediate media such as optical fibers, cables and electromagnetic waves that transmit information, and storage entities such as magnetic disks, optical disks and magnetic tapes that store information.