Dr Steven Simske from Hewlett-Packard Labs who is also one of the School’s Honorary Professors will be delivering a seminar on Thursday 28 April 2016:
Multimedia and the Future of Knowledge and Culture
Dr Steven Simske – Hewlett-Packard Labs
Thursday 28 April – 2.00 pm
Exchange Building LT3
In this talk, I will discuss the dual transformation of the world's information-from analogue to digital and from linear to non-linear.
Multimedia and electronic publishing are on the forefront of the analogue to digital conversion of the world's information. Our communications, our finances, our social interactions, our education, and effectively our entire culture is now online. This provides a large number of advantages, but also a wide range of threats to privacy, security and data integrity.
However, the transformation from linear reading, learning and thinking to the non-linearity of electronic content ingestion - particularly that associated with multi-media content - is potentially of even greater concern. Will it change the human mind from a holder of content to a holder of context? From an integrated thinking machine to a referential one? From a holder of facts to a holder of URLs?
I then consider how the media for knowledge affect the way people think, and the way society functions. Does multimedia inevitably drive us to distraction? Or can it be used to create better content than it currently provides? I will focus on the great opportunity - and the great responsibility - of multimedia experts to craft the past, present and future of content in a way which both preserves its value and allows its value to be appreciated by people of different age, gender, culture and purpose. The future of knowledge, and thus the future of culture and society, depends on how multimedia content is crafted, accessed and preserved. This talk will try to outline some plans for doing this right.