Month: September 2001

Give Me Interactivity Or Give Me Death

This article by Blather's Dave Walsh first appeared in The Irish Times of Monday, September 17, 2001, as Click here to communicate Despite all the hype, online interactivity continues to leave us underwhelmed. Dave Walsh clicks into the world of multimedia to find out what 'interactive' means and why it fails to deliver on its promises while going too far to deliver the goods Nearly a decade has passed since we were first treated to "interactive multimedia", buzzwords which arrived with the CD-ROM revolution and rapidly suffered overuse. While "multimedia" is relatively easy to define (the combined use of several media) - "interactivity" remains vague. When they first appeared, interactive CD-ROMs were feted as more than just a receptacle. Apparently, some strange alchemical transformation had incurred during manufacture, imbuing the discs with occult qualities. Less facetiously, a CD could harbour a virtual world - from the practicality of a specialist...