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hypertext.rmit
Review.
Wise, Richard, Multimedia: A Critical Introduction. Routledge, London, 2000. ISBN 0 415 12151 5. 228 pp.,
WiseÕs "Multimedia: A Critical Introduction" is a work that seeks to explore the political, social and cultural facets of what might loosely be characterised as new media, though from a distinctly media studies or communication studies perspective. In this it details the history of multimedia, relying strongly on the examples of radio and television, and discusses policy issues relating to globalisation, media, public interest broadcasting, and the relations of state, private capital and the individual to new media forms. It achieves this with some success, but the work, certainly for this reader, has a sense of confusion about it that is the result of terminological indecision, and also the inevitable problems of attempting a critical contextualisation of a domain that evolves too rapidly for the printed word to accommodate.
Multimedia, as a generic term, is defined extremely broadly in this book, so rather than dealing with what is commonly thought of as the specific combination of previously disparate media types into a digital ÔsoupÕ, it regards multimedia as any computer mediated form of communication, extending from email, CDROM, the World Wide Web to Digital Radio Broadcasting. The emphasis then is not so much on multimedia per se, but the relation of existing media to digital practice, and the continuity that can be demonstrated between existing media practices and the Ônew mediaÕ, particularly from the point of view of the recent political contexts of deregulation, free markets, and privatisation.
In some ways this is disappointing, as there remains an opportunity for a critical introductory work to define for students and academics the appropriate terminologies, critical tools and procedures for a theoretical analysis of new media. Indeed, what is apparent in this field at the moment is not the extraordinary interdisciplinary colonisation of ÔmultimediaÕ, but the lack of a framework to teach digital culture as a specific practice for media and communications programs. In WiseÕs discussion it is not clear why everything else ought to be called multimedia, and the book is much more usefully thought of as being about digital technologies and broadcasting, than about multimedia. Therefore the chapters on the history of particular technologies, the development of communications networks, on privacy and encryption, and special effects in cinema, raise particularly interesting examples of the interstices between digital and analogue practice, and offer themselves as useful introductory case studies, and on the whole the work strongly argues for and identifies the ways in which ÔmultimediaÕ exists within a mass media continuum. In effect it recolonises multimedia for media studies in much the same way that Wise identifies ÔmultimediaÕ as having been colonised by existing ideological practices.
On the other hand this is a strength in the book, as it demonstrates that the Ôinformation ageÕ may not be the paradigmatic break so many of its acolytes believe. In this the book is useful, and does provide ways to distil the rhetoric of multimedia salesmanship into more familiar contexts. In this it would serve well as a university text introducing some of the general issues surrounding ÔmultimediaÕ, however it also means that the specific qualities of new media are not discussed in any substantive way, let alone how they may be studied (or taught).
Finally, Wise argues strongly for the reapplication of public broadcasting principles to issues of ÔmultimediaÕ policy. It is perhaps ironic that as far as the Internet is concerned it is organisations such as VictoriaÕs VicNet (http://www.vicnet.net.au/) that is pursuing a public broadcasting model rather than the ABC Ñ what WiseÕs book doesnÕt appear to do is to recognise that this difference already exists.
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