3. Accomplishments during Definition Phase
3.1 Identification of international strategies and agreements
3.2 Compilation and integration of WCMC on-line datasets
3.3 Conservation actions, strategies and organizations
3.4 Conservation issues (problems)
3.7 Geographic information and clickable maps
3.8 Visualization (VRML 3-D displays)
3.9 Extending search query hyperlinks
3.11 Hyperlinking text content
3.12 User profile and marketing strategy
3.13 Development of prototype product and its presentation
4. Strategic Opportunity Framework
4.8 Moderation and maintenance of information
4.10 Evolution of information technology
4.11 Trends in dissemination of electronic information
4.13 Comprehension and multimedia
5. Practical challenges and responses
5.1 Logistical compromise in data handling
5.2 Language and translation issues
5.3 Data sources and ownership
5.4 Data security and copyright
5.5 Data quality, review and update
5.6 Interactivity with CD-ROM and Web users
5.9 Income generation/Not-for-profit
5.10 Costs to users of obtaining information
6. Conclusions and Recommendations
6.5
Review and potentials for Implementation Phase
Annex:
Multimedia and the World Wide Web - A European Perspective
• Information on species, ecosystems and sites affected by the problems and solutions;
• Associated information on relevant international organizations;
• Associated information on relevant publications and other information sources; and
• Development of two-way links to relevant external websites.
The component datasets are built up from public domain information. They are unique in the world and regarded as "industry-standards" for both their quality and category of information. The information would be made available on both CD-ROM and the Web in a manner that facilitates user interaction, annotation and feedback to ensure further development of the information.
There will be an English language version of all the data. Where interest and/or use is high, certain of the data will be in other European languages. User interfaces will be in several European languages. Through a multi-lingual thesaurus, users can make foreign language query searches and use non-English subject categories to access data only available in English. With much of the data, hyperlinks in one language are valid in another.
This product/service is of pan-European
relevance. It is equally of global importance and will be launched and
marketed as such. It enhances inter-sectoral information transfer, as called
for by Agenda 21 and complementary regional agendas in Europe; it
supports the European Union's meeting of its objectives under international
agreements such as the Bern, Bonn and Ramsar Conventions, the Caracas
Action Plan and the Global Biodiversity Strategy; it directly
supports both European Council Directives on the conservation of natural
habitats, fauna and flora (Natura 2000) and current EC programmes
on nature protection within the Community and environmental protection
in developing countries and third countries.
In its final form, the product is intended to serve the needs of the general public and professionals for comprehensive information on biological conservation, also making available sources of information that are currently difficult or expensive to access.
The major challenges of the Definition Phase were to:
The product would directly serve the programme objectives of several pan-European activities, including ‘state of the environment’ studies, Natura 2000, and The Pan-European Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy (Council of Europe 1996). It addresses the requirement for inter-sectoral information transfer called for by Agenda 21 and complementary regional agendas in Europe, such as the Environmental Programme for Europe (1995, UNECE/CEP/25). It supports the meeting of commitments to relevant international agreements to which the European Union is party, such as the Bern Convention, Bonn Convention and Ramsar Convention, the Caracas Action Plan and the Global Biodiversity Strategy.
The proposed product would also assist the objective
of the upcoming Community programme Environment in Developing Countries.
The programme recognizes the Community's role in the promotion of measures
at international level to deal with regional or world-wide environmental
problems; also that cooperation programmes carried out in partnership with
developing countries are sensitive to the environment, particularly in
the areas of: (1) preserving biological diversity through the conservation
of the ecosystems and habitats necessary to maintain diversity of species
and the survival of endangered species; (2) sustainable management of marine
ecosystems; and (3) improved practices for soil conservation ... forest
protection and the fight against desertification.
Specifically, IEEP provided advice on environmental policy (particularly within Europe) and on the requirements of the project from the viewpoint of professional users.
NSM provided advice on electronic publishing, product design and marketing.
WCMC provided its substantial experience in collating and managing major databases on the conservation of species, ecosystems and protected areas. In collaboration with its other organizational partners and co-funders of this project, it extended the scope of this information, its interlinkages and accessibility, and developed significant new WWW information tools and services (described in Section 3.2 Compilation and integration of WCMC on-line datasets).
UIA has for over two decades integrated and managed information, provided by international organizations of all concerns and colours, on global problems and the actions society is taking to alleviate these problems. Its wider competence is as a clearinghouse for information on international associations, their perceived concerns and activities. UIA contributed these data, enhanced in the fields relevant to biodiversity conservation. It also provided CD-ROM capability and experimented with virtual reality structures for complex networks.
The datasets and competence in data handling and delivery of UIA and WCMC are fundamental to this project. Information content accumulated over many years was made available to the project. However, it must be acknowledged here that the work of both organizations rely on extensive links with other organizations working in their respective fields. Through the collaborative networks of UIA and WCMC, thousands of organizations and individuals are effective partners and beneficiaries of the project; it is anticipated that a number of these would be drawn into the follow-up phase of the project, both as contributors and to test and evaluate the product.
In particular, WCMC has developed the following tools and services, each of which relates directly to information being incorporated into the UIA problems and strategies files.
Using a variety of sources available on the Internet, an experimental hierarchical framework, similar to that described above for species, was created for 303 threatened habitats/ecosystems and biomes. This was to explore the feasibility of interlinking individual species and protected areas through data on habitats. The habitat types were arranged in interlacing hierarchies corresponding to the classification parameters of the information source. For example, Holdridge’s set of the world's major ecosystems is classified by climate (temperature and rainfall). Other sources that were used classify habitat principally by vegetation structure or geographic factors. Sources used included the UNESCO terrestrial cover classification, the US Forest Service vegetation classification system and other north American sources, the Ramsar Convention wetland classification system and the UNEP/GRID world vegetation map. Not processed, due to their inaccessibility in English language format, were the CORINE habitat types for Europe (now accessible from the CD-ROM Natural Resources since obtained from the European Environment Agency (EEA)).
The notion of "loops", and its relevance to this project, requires some explanation. The purpose of detecting feedback loops is to raise the level of analysis of individual issues to a higher, systematic level. It is a technique which has the potential to add extra meaning to basic data, particularly relevant for policy makers and others concerned with understanding the interrelationships and root causes of environmental problems.
A self-reinforcing ("vicious") problem loop is a chain of problems, each aggravating the next, and with the last looping back to aggravate the first in the chain. An example is: Man-made disasters ® Vulnerability of ecosystem niches ® Natural environment degradation ® Shortage of natural resources ® Unbridled competition for scarce resources ® Man-made disasters. Such cycles are "vicious" because they are self-sustaining. Organizational strategies and programmes that focus on only one problem in a chain tend to fail because the cycle has the capacity to regenerate itself. Individual "vicious problem cycles" also tend to interlock, forming tangled skeins of interlinked global problems which implicate single environmental problems in chains and complexes of multi-sectoral issues. Without the means to untangle the relationships, the response to a conservation challenge may be ineffective, self-defeating or, even, harmful.
The pre-existing data file on problem loops was critically reviewed. The programme that analyses aggravating pathways in the data and identifies loops was re-run. Loops were identified for selected groups of problems only (since chain searching requires extensive computing time even with 133 MHz PCs). Two weeks of judicious editing of aggravating links between problem entries reduced the size of the file from 19,000 problem loops (maximum 7 problems per loop) to around 7,000. A preliminary analysis was also made for cycles of facilitating strategies.
As the work was left at the completion of the Definition Phase, there are 200 loops containing environmental issues relevant to this project. It is expected that this number could increase significantly following the editing work on content and hyperlinks anticipated for the Implementation Phase of the project. The loops detected as part of this Definition Phase of the project have been presented on the prototype CD. Work was also done in improving the display of loops, using popups, from single data records.
Future work on loops would benefit from selection on a faster machine (to avoid having to segment the data). The selection algorithm should also be reviewed by a person with mathematical skills to determine whether it could be done more efficiently. Consideration could also be given to activating other search facilities to detect various types of redundancy in the pattern of links, and notably potentially erroneous link patterns. Further work should also advance the visualization in 3-D of loops and loop interlocks (Section 3.8 Visualization (VRML 3-D displays).
Detailed feasibility investigations for incorporating clickable maps and images into the prototype and the final product were not considered necessary during the Definition Phase. It is clear that there are various available software possibilities for applying this technique to both UIA and WCMC data with appropriate software upgrades.
Software and hardware constraints on web-related editing, loop processing and in-house multimedia facilities were also noted.
Over 50 displays were generated using VRML 1.0. The experiments explored several display metaphors: intersecting polygons, networks, tagging polygons forming a sphere, and a solar system. Techniques demonstrated include: colour tagging diverse elements, multiple complexes in the same display (different relative coordinate systems), insertion of lines linking common elements in different complexes of a display (between different relative coordinate systems), representation of complex networks, use of parameters to regulate size of display elements according to measures of importance, hyperlinking to explanatory local htm text and to external websites. The results suggest interesting new ways of looking at environmental problems and institutional complexes (including the UN, the World Bank and the European Union institutions).
Constraints encountered were the labelling facilities within VRML 1.0, the size of files relative to the complexity to be displayed, and browser speed on lower capacity machines. It is expected that these may be overcome or avoided using VRML 2.0 (since released), different file generation techniques in Revelation (in which the original data is resident), and the use of faster machines (150-166 instead of 100-120 MHz) that are now standard. However, there appears to be no restraint on providing hyperlinks between a multiplicity of such generated virtual displays.
The procedure so developed enabled generation of search queries for all problems and strategies placed on the prototype CD. The only constraint encountered was an unforeseen restriction in Folio 3.1 (the CD-ROM software) limiting search strings to 124 characters. This inhibits some of the searches that are more complex and use of advanced facilities (including language variants). Folio 4.1, recently released, increases the length to 194. The string length constraint would not be present on a Web version of the product. A significant point for further investigation is the "stability" of the generated search string syntax with respect to selected search engines that are naturally free to change the syntax to offer new possibilities.
Section 3.9 Extending search query hyperlinks describes the work of the UIA to insert query search links into its Problem data, which enable the user to interrogate WCMC’s datasets. In addition, a number of hardlinks to WCMC online databases were made in the Strategies file. This was to experiment with patterns of hyperlinking between infobases on the CD-ROM and to test clickable access to online resources from an online or offline source. A follow-up step during the Implementation Phase would reciprocate a pattern of linkage from WCMC datasets to those of the UIA. Given the progress made during the Definition Phase, no major problems are anticipated with this.
Although further data and textual development and the enrichment of the pattern of hyperlinks are necessary, the basis for a viable integrated text product has already been achieved. The text product/service is highly innovative because of the unusual proportion of hyperlinks between normally unrelated datasets. Considerable attention may therefore be devoted to further development and integration of the non-textual features of the product/service.
The production of a CD-ROM prototype means that the online/WWW prototype has not been fully demonstrated. However, with their experience in hyperlinked Web applications, the consortium does not anticipate any major obstacles in doing this during the Implementation Phase.
A PowerPoint presentation was made of the Definition Phase project. Illustrated are seven scenarios of typical user applications:
3-D VRML experimental structures: http://www.uia.org/uiademo/vrml/vrmldemo.htm
Techniques were developed to convert clusters of hyperlinked entities from the UIA databases into various 3-D structural configurations, which can be explored, using the facilities of virtual reality (VRML) environments on the Web. The networked relationship structures displayed include problem loops and multiple loop interlocks, as well as clusters of interrelated organizations.
CITES-listed Species Database: http://www.wcmc.org.uk/CITES/english/database.htm
This is a searchable database of CITES listed species, identifying when the species was listed, where it is found, whether any counties have taken out reservations over the listing, etc. This database is a significant development and demonstrates an interactive tool, which would be developed during the Implementation Phase for other conventions.
Protected Areas Database: http://www.wcmc.org.uk/protected_areas/data/new.htm
This database includes a much wider range of information on both nationally and internationally designated sites, including links to descriptions of many of the sites, relationships between internationally designated sites and the national sites they are based on, etc. Future development of this information will include improved ability to link directly to the information on each of the international agreements and programmes (building on the World Heritage example below).
Descriptions of natural sites: http://www.wcmc.org.uk/protected_areas/data/wh/
These are the more detailed descriptions of each of the natural World Heritage sites, initially developed for UNESCO by WCMC. They have been formatted for and placed on the WWW as part of the work for the INFO2000 project, demonstrating the good descriptive information available for key protected areas. In future, links could be added to maps and images. This is also a demonstration of what could be done for other internationally designated sites.
Although cost recovery is essential, especially in a highly competitive information environment, means must nevertheless be found to ensure the involvement of the constituencies identified above, notably through differential pricing schemes.
This project will therefore be faced with several copyright constraints associated with:
The other part of the cycle is the actual feedback from end-users and interested parties capable of correcting and improving the information.
The weakness of any product based purely on dissemination is that the costs of updating the information can become prohibitively high, although these may be reduced by allowing longer periods between updates. The weakness of any product based on data capture alone is that as a research project this runs the risk of being incapable of widely disseminating the results of that research in an effective manner.
In a policy-sensitive environment, the information also needs to be seen to reflect opinions of significant constituencies, especially where the issues are controversial and the subject of diverse interpretations. Failure to reflect such views, and the dynamics of any controversy, can only undermine the credibility of the product to wider constituencies and would then reinforce competing information projects. There is therefore merit in the complementary emphases of the two principal partners in this project.
Given the economic constraints, an extremely pragmatic approach is necessarily required in acquiring and processing information into the databases (see, for example, Section 5.1 Logistical compromise in data handling). Absence of information, or lack of resources to process it, is a reality. Priorities are therefore important, as well as increased reliance on an extensive network of dedicated end-users capable of compensating for such deficiencies on issues of interest to them.
For the product to be viable over the longer term, this moderation function needs to be organised as a buffer between raw input and widely disseminated output. As with any moderated electronic mailing list, provision needs to be made for filtering input. One approach would be to channel feedback into one of a range of buffers pertaining to each database record. These would range from "authorised" to "unknown", whilst excluding eccentric and abusive feedback. Users would then be free to limit or extend their perusal of these categories of comment.
Beyond the moderation function would be the effort to process such feedback into the relevant core database records, as resources permitted. In this area, the principal partners have a strategic advantage, demonstrated over many years, through the priority they give to "adding value" to data rather than simply repackaging and redistributing them. Note that this approach ensures access to feedback information, even when resources are not available to process it in detail.
It is therefore important to organise the product in such a way as to permit specific short-term financing of information on particular issues (whether "charismatic", "fashionable", "popular", or "priority") without undermining the comprehensive scope of the project. One approach is through specific forms of sponsorship.
At this particular time, one or more combinations of CD-ROM and Web technologies are the obvious focus of attention. The hybrid "CD-ROM with Web links" offers interesting possibilities. The situation may be summarised as follows:
The challenge for this project is to provide an information tool, which through its comprehensive scope adapts to narrower or broader needs as required—thus providing the user with a sense of context for any specific environmental concern. At the same time it is clear that where there is a need for detail, greater than that accumulated by the project, the product will serve best when it points on to more specialised sources, notably in a Web environment.
It is important to stress the need to develop a product that carries meaning for both policy-makers and their constituencies—as users with different needs. Failing to do so encourages the latter to make use of other sources of information, creating a gap in comprehension, which may be significant, when policy-makers seek a mandate for their initiatives.
Especially in the course of UIA’s work, it was therefore essential to investigate and develop data-handling techniques to avoid the immediate need to handle detail on the universe of biological species whilst maintaining the coherence and inclusiveness of the overall data structure.
The approach taken in the case of the Problems file was to use taxonomic clusters of species wherever the cost of encoding detail proved inappropriate. Taxonomic branches were therefore opened to those levels of detail necessary to capture individual species or species groups currently considered endangered—or to the level of family, order or class in other apparently non-critical cases. In this way, the comprehensive nature of the database is ensured without expanding taxonomic structures to their fullest detail. Hyperlinks are made to the lowest level of detail possible. (The technique is common in outliner functions in wordprocessors and in zooming features in many graphics packages.) As resources and collaborators become available, higher levels of detail can be documented.
The UIA has been endeavouring to deal with such challenges over many years, exploring different computer and software possibilities over the past decade. For example, it has created a multi-lingual thesaurus (over 103,000 terms), so that users of any UIA data-sets are able to employ non-English subject categories to access data only available in English. Different language interfaces have been created for users of its CD-ROM products. Currently English, French and German interfaces are used. Spanish, Dutch and Italian interfaces have also been tested. The information is also organised such that hyperlinks in one language are valid in another.
In the case of international organizations, official titles are held by the UIA in any languages (with the use of transliteration where necessary). Currently this work has resulted in: English (over 20,000), French (8,229), Spanish (2,662), German (1,861), Italian (1,027), "Nordic" (497), Dutch (445), Latin (307), Portuguese (298), Russian transliterated (174), and Esperanto (71). This means that users can access this data using non-English keywords. In the case of species names, consideration was given to incorporation of common names of species in other European languages. This may be able to be effected during the Implementation Phase, if resources are fortuitously released from tasks of higher priority.
The data on international organizations have been extensively translated into French using a combination of traditional and semi-automatic methods (through funding supplied by francophone governments in 1995/96). As part of this work, portions of the data also were translated into Spanish and German. This work arose from sensitivity to language biases in electronic information. It has created considerable in-house capability in creative application of machine translation. It is intended that further developmental work on computer assisted-translation be undertaken in other languages, as dedicated funding becomes available. It is anticipated that this experience and awareness can be transferred in whatever ways are practicable to the proposed INFO2000 project to enable multi-language user access to the information.
Software packages to provide crude on-the-fly translations of web documents are seen as one means of rapidly providing some degree of access from a variety of languages. These should be examined and incorporated as appropriate. Provision of ‘one-stop’ access to online translation services, e.g. Globalink, should also be explored and enabled if appropriate. It also seems to be the case that using advanced search engine query techniques, access to documents in select languages can be provided.
Parts of the information in the partners’ databases are already available in a variety of forms, some in the public domain. In both cases, the partners add value to the data by standardisation of presentation, quality control, regular updates, and especially by integration into a broader navigable framework. In this sense, the partners do not so much own the data elements as the hypertext structures linking those elements.
It is crucial for the partners to maintain their relationships of trust with their information partners. It is also highly desirable that such partners are involved with the development of this new information product. To this end, WCMC is already in dialogue with certain partners for whom it acts as an information agency and is likely to have specific direct interests in this INFO2000 initiative. The UIA is also intending to inform the 20,000 or so international organizations with which it has annual contact of this project, seeking to elicit support in-kind – in the form of information materials and linkages, and user tests and reviews of the product as it develops.
Whilst there is no intention to impose copyright on the data, the manner in which it is accessed and used must be restricted to prevent abusive copying of the data onto competing sites. At the same time, since the mandates of both partners are to ensure wide dissemination of information, a degree of openness to external access must be maintained. The methods of achieving these essentially contradictory aims will need to be subject to continuing review.
Further work could clarify which information could be freely available and which subject to access under constraint. Constraint may take the form of filtration through a web server generating pages on-the-fly (as currently practised by WCMC); it may also involve use of passwords and billing systems (currently under investigation by the UIA), or a combination of both. Different methods could be used for different parts of the data, especially where specific sponsorship arrangements reduce the challenge of cost recovery.
The particular challenge of this context derives from the emphasis in databases of both partners on a degree of comprehensiveness. Where information, especially that of higher quality, is only available elsewhere under cost and copyright constraint, more flexible approaches must be envisaged.
One small area for data improvement is in the standardisation and completion of the citations in the UIA bibliography database (e.g. addition of ISBN). This need be done only for those publications referred to by the problems and strategies eventually selected for inclusion in the INFO200 product. There could also be consideration of whether this sample of data and WCMC’s Conservation Library data is amenable to combination for the final product.
For both the UIA and WCMC, the feedback facilities offered through the Web enable users to point out both deficiencies in the data and new sources of information. Methods of accrediting suppliers of feedback could be explored to ensure that such comments are available, duly flagged, to other online users. As suggested in Section 4.8 Moderation and maintenance of information, one promising approach to be tested during the Implementation Phase would be to channel feedback into a range of buffers labelled "authorised" to "unknown". Users would then have the possibility of immediately accessing additional information flagged to the level of credibility they require. Such feedback would eventually be processed, according to priorities and resources, to integrate the new with pre-existing information. It is possible that some of this editing and integration could be done by external editors, who are gradually brought into partnership with the project through their personal and professional interest in its services.
Professional users will require the information in order to fulfil their corporate tasks (including in some cases for commercial purposes). They will place high demands on the quality of the information acquired. They will place a premium on the time needed to collect the information. They will usually have access to relatively sophisticated technical resources and their information-handling skills will be of a relatively high level. They will be more used to work in English (and French in the case of certain international professionals), if this is not their language of daily use, and, in principle, they will be willing to pay for useful information. Non-professional users, by contrast, will tend to the opposite in all these respects.
The fundamental differences between the needs and capabilities of these two potential groups argues for the consortium to design its product for professional user groups. However, professional users themselves fall into different groups, each with its own particular needs and capabilities. The design of the products’ databases will have to take into account such differences.
Two important distinctions between different professional users can be made.
First is the distinction between those working in the field of biodiversity and those who require information on some aspect of biodiversity concerning their work in a different field. In general, biodiversity professionals will be more familiar with the kind of information made available through this project, the organization of this kind of information and the various sources of relevant data on biodiversity than those active in other areas. They are also likely to use environmental databases more frequently and may require more detailed and specialised information.
Second are the distinctions amongst other professionals who would be potentially interested in accessing the databases. These can be grouped according to work/occupation. The most relevant are as follows:
There are many challenges for this marketing this product, which is transiting through the era of authoritative, hardcopy information to dispersed, electronic information. They include opportunities for:
This project is highly dependent upon what might appropriately be termed "hidden" partners. These are the providers of information, which are likely to include prime users of that information and, as such, highly motivated to ensure its accuracy and improvement.
In addition to direct generation of income by the venture, the partners, whether separately or jointly, seek to ensure its continuing sustainable development of the project through arrangements with other partners. These arrangements might take the form of sponsorships for specific categories of information or contractual development of specialised areas of the information.
Barbara Quint makes the point that even data that are free to the end user are liable to be costing somebody something. Libraries often host CD-ROM databases that are available to any passing searcher, like their print collections.
The challenge for the proposed product is to position its access costs within this range as it evolves over time, possibly offering a variety of formulae according to the type of the user. These potentials will be tested out during the Implementation Phase in trials with user groups.
|
How much will it cost to find this item or information online. |
Cheap (Free to $19.99) | Mid-Range ($20 to $100) | Expensive ($100 to $300) | Major Expense ($300 and up, up, up) |
| A newspaper article | $ | |||
| A patent | $ | $$ | ||
| A technical article from a scholarly journal | $$ | |||
| A recent statute | $ | |||
| The text of a legal opinion. | $ | |||
| A quick trademark search | $$ | |||
| A background check on Company X. (It’s publicly-owned.) | $$ | |||
| A profile of a privately owned company | $$ | $$$ | ||
| Locating an expert for a consulting job | $$ | |||
| A short list of articles and books on a topic | $$ | |||
| Prices for my stock portfolio | $ | |||
| Background check on an individual | $$ | $$$ | ||
| Quick fact check | $ | $$ | ||
| Keeping up to date all year on my key topics | $$$ | |||
| An industry overview | $$ | $$$ | ||
| A complete multicompany, market research study | $$$$ | |||
| A complete search on any company that might have used this trade name | $$ | |||
| Getting enough information so I can file a patent | $$$$ |
Information-gathering through contact with those most motivated to provide the information, usually involving free exchange of information. This relationship with providers has to be handled with great sensitivity, which needs to be reflected in the design of the product/service and the manner in which the information is made available to ensure cost recovery. This phase will be to a significant extent dependent on interactive updating (see 5.6 Interactivity with CD-ROM and Web users).
Information processing of the information received is vital as a means of ensuring a quality product/service conforming to particular standards of presentation. This phase tends to be resource intensive in terms of conceptual/research concerns and data manipulation. The smooth integration of associated editorial work is a continuing challenge to the design and use of software essential to this phase, notably in terms of use of information on the Web or presented as feedback messages.
Marketing of the product and service to potential users will benefit considerably from Web facilities and hyperlink integration with other Web sites. Of special concern is the continuing effort to strike a balance between presentation of information at zero cost (both to satisfy minimal needs of a particular class of users and to attract new users) and implementation of one or more systems of charges. This must be done flexibly to satisfy the differing needs of the principal partners and to take account of any special contractual relationships they may have with their own collaborators.
Updating of the information is necessarily a direct and essential consequence of the interactive nature of the product/service and vital to its sustainability through the involvement of active users. This phase feeds back into the information gathering phase.
It is noted that professional users themselves fall into different groups, the biodiversity professional and other professionals, each with its own particular needs and capabilities. The design of the databases should consider these differences.
In order to ensure that the information products and services meet user needs, a programme of liaison with users should include the following:
It is recommended that the specialist policy and marketing partners in the consortium (IEEP and NSM), who are minor partners in terms of production and ownership of its information content, should be required to sign agreements to waive any commercial or intellectual property rights to the product (other than appropriate mention as contributors). The principal partners, in terms of data ownership (UIA and WCMC), should reach agreement on how they will disseminate the product and distribute any benefits arising from its development and dissemination. A basic agreement should be reached before the contract for the Implementation Phase is signed.
It is recommended that there should not be any significant budget devoted to acquiring use rights for copyrighted materials. The current solution (in the prototype) relies on the nature of the Web itself to enable direct and easy user access to such materials, if required. The information provided by the partners, in addition to hyperlinking to each other, should aim to:
IEEP has enjoyed the opportunity to contribute to the development of an information product of direct benefit to itself and others acting in the environmental policy arena. Graham Bennett, Director of IEEP, looks forward to contributing to the user workshops (through the proposed new project partner AIDEnvironment).
NMS has appreciated the focus provided by this project in providing advice for a concrete electronic publishing project and honing its electronic marketing expertise. Ken Friedman’s contribution would be extended during the Implementation Phase to product design issues.
UIA has found this project pivotal in the development of its Web-based information strategy and its long-standing aspirations for participative and interactive online editing of information by international organizations and others.
Quite apart from the value of the integrated information and its dissemination, WCMC regards this project as a vitally important vehicle for increasing the ability of the Centre to provide access to information of importance in biodiversity conservation. Indeed, this project is a "jumping off point" for future information services, for review and update of the information, and for developing collaborative work with other organizations. WCMC has therefore taken steps to review parts of the information services developed so far, with appropriate organizations (including potential users and collaborators such as IUCN, BirdLife International, the CITES Secretariat and the World Heritage Centre). WCMC has been working with some of these organizations to develop plans for the future maintenance of the datasets, and for addition of other relevant data (including maps).
There is considerable potential for increasing the availability of this information further, and for increasing its integration with other datasets and with the information available on the strategies and agreements and their implementation. There is also considerable addition scope for increasing linkages with other relevant information sites on the Web. This would be done as part of the Implementation Phase of the project.
As the consortium has worked to develop proposals for future funding of the project. Opportunities to draw in a wide range of collaborators have become apparent, as has also the potential for co-financing of certain components. These opportunities will be explored in the coming months.
Note that in carrying out this work, the partners have deliberately developed information tools and services that can stand independently, as the opportunities to develop collaborative relationships with other organizations interested in these datasets is thereby improved, and hence the opportunities for co-financing.
The first recorded citation of multimedia was noted over 35 years ago, in 1962. The original meaning of the term was "using, involving or encompassing several media" (Merriam-Webster’s 1993: 764). It came to encompass many various kinds of technologies used conjointly in differing combinations. The early idea of multimedia were flexible and involved many kinds of technology from the simplest to the most advanced (for examples, see: Albright 1972; Block 1974; Bory 1968; Bush 1945; Cage 1969; Crane and Stofflett 1984; Di Felice 1980, 1984; Friedman 1973: 63; Friedman 1976; Friedman and Gugelberger 1976; Glusberg 1971; Judge 1984; Masters and Houston 1968; Paik 1964; Paik and Moffett 1995; Ravicz 1974).
One of the most striking features about early multimedia experiments was the rich variety of hardware and software put to use. The central issue was the engagement of a variety of media that could address any number of senses. Multimedia ventures included sound technology using phonograph, telephone, tape recorder, radio, public announcement systems, specially created sound devices, experimental instruments for contemporary music and standard musical instruments. The sense of sight was engaged through drawing, printing, printmaking, lithography, silk-screen, photography, silent motion pictures, and video as well as archaic techniques ranging from printing blocks and stones to modern equivalents such as rubber stamps and postage stamps. Text in was presented written, printed and spoken form, as well as text forms delivered by early version of computer on paper or screen. Other senses were also addressed including projects that involved the sense of taste in the form of foods and food-like inventions; smell through perfumes, olfactory broadcast techniques such as scented fogs and sprays; the sense of touch through massage, full-body environments, tactile displays, furniture, clothing and other devices; the sense of motion through active environments that moved around the participant or engaged the participant in unusual motion during transit through the environment; the perception of motion and body-awareness through dance and choreography; and more. In addition, many established media were themselves forms of multimedia, embracing several senses at once, including motion pictures, opera, video, television broadcast and more.
In recent years, however, the term multimedia has been almost exclusively associated with advanced information technology systems. Brockhampton (1994: 363) defines multimedia as a "computer system that combines audio and video components to create an interactive application that uses text, sound and graphics (still, animated and video sequences). For example, a multimedia database of musical instruments may allow a user not only to search and retrieve text, about a particular instrument but also to see pictures of it and hear it play a piece of music."
Even though this view of multimedia is widespread, the original definition is far more powerful. It is more powerful because it emphasizes judgment and skill rather than technology. It is more powerful because it is more flexible. And it is more powerful because it suggests serving users in appropriate ways rather than addressing every problem with expensive systems and ever-increasing support costs. In an era of shrinking budgets, this is a powerful advantage.
The power of multimedia is not determined by hardware. It is determined by the ability to use different applications and effects in appropriate forms for specific purposes.
Defining multimedia as "using, involving
or encompassing several media" (Merriam-Webster’s 1993: 764) involves social,
scientific and cultural issues as much as it involves technology. This
analysis will argue for multiple interpretations of multimedia and its
uses.
Understanding Multimedia, Understanding Media
To understand multimedia, it is vital to recognize the difference between what can be done with today’s advanced technologies and what should be done with content for user needs. Few subjects of equal importance to post-industrial society have been subject to the one-dimensional interpretation seen in discussions of multimedia.
The media industry itself recognizes the primacy of content over technological bells and whistles. "Content is king" has become an axiomatic slogan of the multimedia industry. It is true that a great deal of multimedia content involves games, entertainment and special effects. Even so, the need for serious content is driving the mergers and alliances between different and previously separate media firms.
Content and program developers are merging with information delivery organizations. Telephone companies and cable companies are joining with publishing firms and movie production studios. Still-protected national telephone monopolies are launching their own content and information service firms to prepare for deregulation. The world’s largest computer software company is buying rights and royalties for a host of works in different art forms. Newspaper firms and academic journals are building sites on the World Wide Web.
From Berlingske Tidende, Die Zeit and the Financial Times to Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal, a tour of major international newspapers during any two-week period reveals hundreds of stories on the ways in which the media industry is seeking ways to identify, produce and provide content. Anyone who reads the daily press or weekly magazines such as The Economist, Capital or Business Week is also aware of these developments.
To understand multimedia, therefore
it is vital to understand media. This means a consideration of what media
contain and the ways in which media to work.
Multimedia Then and Now
Multimedia have existed for centuries. The concept of multimedia is an intellectual construct distinct from the focus on technology that characterize discussions of multimedia today.
There exist many more kinds of multimedia technology than CD-ROM entertainment programs, game simulations or infotainment sites on the World Wide Web. Some of these technologies have existed for hundreds of years.
Consider, for example, drama and pageant. Drama as we known it today goes back at least to ancient Greece. Pageantry has an even more unusual history. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, pageantry moved beyond court ceremonial and church ritual to become an event that surrounded, engaged and embraced the audience with appeals to every sense imaginable (Di Felice 1980, 1984). The emblemata of the Middle Ages were another example of a multimedium, bringing images and text to an illiterate population in a way that permitted viewers to see a visual representation of symbolic content along with instructive or religious text presented in memorable verse form so that the illiterate audience could grasp and remember a text that might itself be read by only a few (Friedman and Gugelberger 1976).
Multimedia have always been enriched and multiplied presentations of single media.
A medium, simply put, is a tool for delivering information. Webster’s defines a medium as, among other things, "...2 : a means of effecting or conveying something: as a (l) : a substance regarded as the means of transmission of a force or effect (2) : a surrounding or enveloping substance .... b pl usu media (l) : a channel or system of communication, information or entertainment -- compare -- mass medium (2) : a publication or broadcast that carries advertising (3) : a mode of artistic expression or communication (4) : something (as a magnetic dick) on which information may be stored ..." (Merriam-Webster’s 1993: 72).
The first media were vehicles of communication. The oldest natural media are voice and language. Written media developed reasonably soon afterward in evolutionary terms. They emerged first as painted symbols on walls, much later as abstract marks on rocks or sticks, later still as alphabets or ideograms on clay tablets and papyrus.
Pictorial media remain the oldest media in common use, with paintings, drawings, lithographs, maps and the like surviving still. Pictorial media are primarily used today for entertainment, but they are also used to communicate or to inform. They often add entertainment value to educational or informative products. Text media such as letters or manuscripts remain the oldest standard medium in active use for communication, education and information. Books and newspapers are the next oldest in active use for communication and education while entertainment and infotainment have, for most people, been taken over by pictorial and pictorial-sonic media such as film, television and video. A great amount of information from news to political campaigns is now delivered as a form of infotainment for vast audiences who read little and watch much, as well as for the billions of illiterates who do not read at all.
The most widely used media of the 20th century are vocal and visual. Telegraph is now a highly specialized and little used medium. Telephone is perhaps the most used public medium. Both were developed in the 19th century. The far more recent telefax grew out of these. Photography was also born in the last century, with motion pictures coming only a few decades later as mechanical ingenuity applied to photography made film possible. The contemporary mass media of infotainment, television and motion pictures, with their descendants, video, laser disk and CD-ROM, come closest to the range of effects that people generally think of think of as multimedia.
This view of multimedia is correct as far as it goes, but it is mistaken in broad principle. Multimedia remain what they have always been: any of the dozens of possible media that can be combined in hundreds of ways to communicate, to teach, to inform and to entertain. Those who confuse multimedia with a relatively standardized combination of special effects used primarily by producers of games and entertainment have limited themselves to a flat, one-dimensional understanding of multimedia. This negates the potential power of the multimedia concept. For all practical purposes, those who think of multimedia in this one-dimensional way are limited to an understanding of multimedia defined by the designers of games and infotainment.
This misunderstanding hampers the production
of multimedia for a host of other possibilities. The demand for special
effects occasioned by this misunderstanding drives budget costs up and
use value down on many multimedia projects that can be more effectively
realized by simple techniques than by complicated technologies. Finally,
the failure to understand the genuine character and potential of the multimedia
era is a failure to realize the fullest and best potential of an exciting
tool.
What is multimedia?
The problem of understanding multimedia is the confusion between usefulness and special effects. Marshall McLuhan’s famous probes into the meaning of media explored dozens of different media and their meaning (McLuhan 1962, 1964; 1967; McLuhan and Watson 1970). For McLuhan, a "medium -- while it may be a new technology -- is any extension of our bodies, minds or beings (Gordon 1997: 43). This emphasis was made clear in the subtitle of McLuhan’s (1964) most famous book, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man.
This broader and more elegant definition had a profound effect on the early innovators of multimedia. Two of the most influential were Korean artist and composer Nam June Paik and American writer and artist Dick Higgins.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Paik lived and worked in Germany (Friedman 1976). During those years, he began to imagine new ways of understanding and working with television. Unable to gain access to expensive studio equipment and even more expensive broadcast time, Paik’s first television experiments involved the use of magnets directly on the early generation television sets to distort the already-broadcast images being shown. In 1964, Paik purchased the first available Sony portable video camera. Within moments of the purchase, he shot about ten minutes of raw, grainy footage and made histyory that evening with a presentation of the world’s first video art at CafÈ a Go-Go in New York. Later, as a professor at the D¸sseldorf Art Academy and the California Institute for the Arts, Paik began to experiment with ever more sophisticated video techniques. Among other things, he invented the world’s first video synthesizer together Japanese inventor Shuya Abe and taught a generation of artists who were later to emerge as the first video artists. Not long after, Paik’s students had also become the first generation of producer-directors on MTV, closing the circle in two decades from experimental art to commercial entertainment (Friedman 1976).
Paik was active in the influential circle of artists known as Fluxus. Several of Paik’s Fluxus colleagues were also important to the birth of video art and other kinds of multimedia and intermedia, including the Germans Wolf Vostell and Joseph Beuys, Japanese artists Takehisa Kosugi and Shigeko Kubota, Lithuanian-born Americans George Maciunas and Jonas Mekas, French artists Jean Dupuy, Robert Filliou and Ben Vautier and others. The interpretations these artists gave to multimedia and intermedia ran from the simplest and most primitive possibilities, typified by the folklore-based projects of Sweden’s Bengt af Klintberg and the poetry performances of American Emmett Williams to Paik’s own technologically dazzling installations and the sophisticated book-print-installation works of American Alison Knowles.
By the mid-60s, there arose an important series of distinctions that differentiated multimedia as media that were presented at the same time from multimedia as multiple media that formed a unitary program. This concept was summed up in the term intermedia, a term coined by Dick Higgins (1966) to represent works of art that were born at the edge of several media working in unison. Higgins, a former student of composer John Cage, published the term in a influential 1966 essay that became a founding document for experimental art. The term itself is now used along with the term multimedia in many similar connections. It is an interesting footnote to the history of multimedia that Higgins later found that this term had previously been coined and used in the late 1700s and early 1800s, used in much the same sense as his own usage by the eminent British poet and critic, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
By the late 1960s, the term was in wide use in Europe and around the world. One of the hallmark projects in its diffusion was a book published in Germany titled Intermedia 1969.
In its reborn sense, intermedia referred
to "art forms that draw on the roots of several media, growing into new
hybrids." (Friedman 1997: 37). Like film or opera, intermedia can be seen
whenever several individual media grow into forms that are effective and
convincing media in their own right. This is also an effect definition
for multimedia.
Considering Multimedia
In considering multimedia, we must consider three separate and related issues.
First is the issue of media -- any or all kinds of media -- used in combination to deliver information, communication, education or entertainment.
Second is the issue of the kinds of techniques or technology used to translate, store, transmit and deliver those media.
Third is the stereotyped meaning of the term "multimedia, " with all that it has come to imply. It may be premature to dismiss multimedia as so much nonsense it may well be time to entertain what Clifford Stoll (1995) terms "second thoughts on the information superhighway, " multimedia included.
This latter use of the term is the least interesting, but it has come into common usage for an understandable reason. That reason is the location of the multimedia phenomenon in the hands of any number of high technology companies and organizations who use their ability to combine computers, CD-ROM, World Wide Web sites or other related technologies in the second sense of the word to deliver multimedia content as we have defined it in the first sense of the word. Before considering the future of multimedia, it is worth examining a few historical examples of convincing multimedia.
Multimedia did not begin in the twentieth century, but rather at some time in the earliest stages of prehistory. The difference between our understanding of today’s technology-driven forms of multimedia and early forms is simply that we haven’t seen them or described them under the rubric of multimedia.
The symbolic value of pageantry, the use of symbolism and drama to heighten the effect of a message has always had a role in the effect of information on human beings. As a result of this well known principle, the ability of today’s technology to dress a message in multiple forms and enhance delivery through several channels of reinforcement has affected the growth of multimedia.
Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) mathematical theory of information established a well understood theory of information and the role of media in communicating information from one point to another. Earlier models of multimedia were less precise, but the very ambiguity of earlier multimedia examples gave them a tactile richness that enabled them to communicate on multiple channels.
In some cases, this has been helpful. Dramatizing action, embellishing words with images, rendering images interactive all have their purpose.
Opera is a well known example of an early multimedium, as is drama. Today, the best example of a commonly used historical multimedia is the realization of drama in film. A perfect example is Kenneth Branagh’s (1989) rendition of Shakespeare’s [1599, 1623] (1961, 1991) classic Henry V.
The first performance of Henry V took place in Shakespeare’s London just short of two centuries ago. In those days, there was no way to convincingly render the vast scene that the playwright set before his audience. Shakespeare’s prologue to Henry V beautifully describes the problem of rendering the action of his play on stage:
"... but pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that hath
dar’d
On this unworthy scaffold to bring
forth
So great an object: can this cockpit
hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may
we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?"
(Henry V, Prologue: 8-14)
In Shakespeare’s day, the technology did not permit the proper rendition of battle scenes. Any attempt at battle was of necessity limited to dueling among few players or descent into to the "brawl ridiculous" (Henry V, IV: Chorus, 51) that failed utterly to capture the reality of the battle field.
Many plays rely as much on the imagination for envisioning their action as books or poetry. Shakespeare appealed to his audience, inviting them to fill in the missing scenes and embellish the sketches of action by engaging their own "imaginary forces" (Henry V, Prologue: 18). "Work, work your thoughts, " the chorus admonishes to "eke out our performance with your mind" (Henry V, III: Chorus, 25, 35). And thus audiences, from Shakespeare’s day, nearly to our own, were obliged to grip each "story; in little room confining mighty men, mangling by starts the full course of their glory" (Henry V, V, II: Chorus: 2-4).
In realizing the grand design of Shakespeare’s historical drama, Branagh’s film was more true to Shakespeare’s intent than any stage-bound realization of the play can be. The director captured the reality of late Medieval battle. In doing so, he elevated a magnificent play into a grand multimedia performance embracing drama, action, choreography, geography, and music to portray an historical event in fruitful rendition.
Audiences are so used to seeing film as an established medium that few recognize multimedia when they see it. This is as it should be. When multimedia are truly effective, the viewer should not so much be aware of the media as be aware of the spectacle revealed.
McLuhan’s dictum, "the medium is the message," comes into play in the unconscious perception -- and the failure to consciously perceive -- media. An effect medium is so much an extension of the witness that the medium itself recedes into background against the foreground of presented content. In short, the way we perceive, the way we communicate and the way in which we interact with our communication media affects the way we think.
The widely accepted Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that language itself affects the way in which human being perceiver their world (Sapir 1973; Whorf 1969). The way human beings give voice to the world -- in other words, media -- shape perception.
These perceptions and the ways in which
we perceive what we perceive are no longer subject to conscious inspection.
In order to see how we see, we must step back from the subject and consider
the act of seeing. In order to hear how we speak, we must step back from
what we say and attend to the action of speaking. Our use of multimedia
is so prevalent that we no longer realize when we are involved in producing
and perceiving multimedia. Thus it is that only the latest and best advertised
multimedia have become the focus of our attention. The rest, many of them
simple and effective, have disappeared from view precisely because they
are simple, effective and so widely used as to become invisible.
An Effective Concept for European Multimedia Development
There is nothing wrong with the fancy multimedia when they work. The problem is that much of what is done in the form of multimedia is not merely unnecessary, but contrary to the effective use of media. Stoll (1995: 142) relates the story of five-year-old Emma whose parents gave her a series of CD-ROM books. She "reacted to the disconnected sound and text, as well as to the painfully slow paging: ‘Pop, I hate this.’ Even more telling, Emma reads her printed books over and over, but has read each electronic book only once."
In every transmission of information, it is vital to consider the simple as well as the complex. Complexity theory does not deal with entities that are complicated beyond necessity. Rather, complexity theory seeks to understand the ways in which simple elements give rise to self-organizing forms of order (Casti 1994; Cohen and Stewart 1995; Kauffman 1995; Lewin 1993; Waldrop 1992).
Too many multimedia projects move into the kinds of disconnected effects that make it impossible for the development of those natural forms of simplicity that promote effective use. This is a technologically mediated version of the representation problem, an ostentatious violation of the law of parsimony. Before the current growth of multimedia venture become usefully mature, the multimedia concept must be trimmed back through the effective use of Occam’s Razor. Solving this problem can be compared to the ways in which Edward Tufte treats problems in information design (Tufte 1983, 1990, 1997).
A first approach to distinguishing those forms of multimedia that deserve rich and thoughtful consideration involves the issue of content. Developing new approaches to multimedia requires conside