What is Interactive Media

I am going to begin my essay with a brief definition of the phrase Interactive Media; "Interactive media is the integration of digital media including combinations of electronic text, graphics, moving images, and sound, into a structured digital computerised environment that allows people to interact with the data for appropriate purposes.

The digital environment can include the Internet, telecoms and interactive digital television. " In the simplest of terms, Interactive media is any type of media that you can interact with.Whether it be a mobile phone, television or a website, as long as your interacting with a piece of digital technology, it then comes under the phrase Interactive Media. How is Interactive Media Developing? Interactive media is vastly developing each year, not only in the amount of users but also the amount of creators, inventors and developers. The scale of young people opting to take further education all around the world in areas such as media, means potential for new ideas and concepts which are already rapidly evolving and emerging every day, is going to be greater.

Also with large media companies ever expanding and developing, not to mention newer and smaller companies starting every week, the demand for talented individuals with new ideas and up-to-date knowledge of software is becoming bigger and bigger. Which also leads to more people deciding to take courses such as Interactive Media in the first place. Interactive Media is an ever-expanding aspect of our ever-expanding society, and I strongly believe that certain people shouldn't be so ignorant to the fact and the world needs to advance further, especially in medial advances and research.Being left wing myself and also a big consumer of digital technology it is still very hard to say just how advanced we may be within the next 100 years. My opinion, looking back on the advances in a little as 20 years, how computers have advanced, how telecommunication has advanced, video, camera, web and many mode modes of interactive media, I think within the next 100 years our whole civilization will be dominated by the digital revolution. I think people may become lazier as a result, more and more things will become easier via digital processes and computers will be capable of much more.

I also feel that jobs will become more scarce increasing unemployment due to the simple fact that machines and computers can operate more precisely than a human being and that they are also more reliable. Also something I wouldn't find too far fetched, is the idea of highly advanced technology, which could potentially be used in employment to take over the mundane rolls (maybe even unnecessary if technology were capable) such as factory workers and working on supermarket checkouts.Humans would normally do this, but being replaced by this newer technology would definitely increase unemployment, but maybe then people can be used in more important and useful jobs. Even if you look now, you will notice supermarkets are already introducing 'self-service' checkouts, which do not require and person-to-person contact. Also factories already base most of their processes through the use of machinery even though there are still thousands of factory workers employed every year to do jobs technology will eventually be able to do alone.

Even more farfetched, and a long way off is the classic idea of flying cars. I do think that may cause a lot of extreme issues due to safety and such and if not thought about properly - ideas such as this one, which sound crazy now, may actually be possible in the future. One of my reasoning's for this is quite simple but fair; when you look back at quite a few old films which are set in the future, I have often thought to myself that their expectations of what they thought the modern day would be like are way off.In many cases I have felt we are much more advanced than their expectations were. I also feel that in the rate that we have advanced in such a short space of time cannot just suddenly stop. I think we will carry on exceeding expectations and people will be discovering and creating more and more new inventions that may eventually be the downfall to our existence.

And although I haven't read into the theory much, I find the idea very intriguing that maybe eventually computers/robots will become so highly advanced that they will be able to think for their selves and make their own decisions.Maybe even so advanced that they can be programmed to feel emotion or to learn, in which case I would feel very uneased about what could occur from such a perfect non-human stronger race. There are also references to ideas like this in films such as Blade Runner and iRobot. Sector of Discussion This leads me on to talk about and discuss the area of interactive media that I have chosen to discuss. The area I have chosen is telecommunications and the development of mobile phones. The reason why I have chosen to talk about mobile phones is that it is probably one of the fastest changing areas of interactive media to date, along with computers.

It is an every day part of most peoples lives in the UK leaving a high demand on mobile technology development. Mobile phones in the last ten years have dramatically evolved from being a 1990's gigantic 'mobile telephone' with the fundamental function of calling only, to the modern day 'mobile phone multimedia device' which performs as expected the fundamental function of calling, but now on top of that we can expect text messaging, video calling, picture messaging, media messaging, video recording, photo taking, mp3, radio, Bluetooth and world wide web all on one tiny device.Also more and more phones to date such as the Cybershot by Sony Ericsson would even be considered more of a camera than a phone, as the camera quality is a good as that of a normal digital camera. I think this will progress further and further until the telecommunication itself is a minute function of an endless string of functions that the piece of technology can actually perform. This is already true within the UK, but more and more people are beginning to base their purchasing decisions on how good the additional functions are over anything else.I think this is one of the main reasons why the mobile phone technology has become so widely used around the world, simply because of all the novelty gadgets you get with the phone itself (along with the practicality of course), which is why people are constantly upgrading also.

With a 1. 3 billion user market, no wonder companies are constantly developing and improving their products and coming up with better deals so that they can squeeze every possible penny they can out of us.I will admit to being a sucker for gadgets and as soon as the latest phone or console is out, I'm guaranteed to want it, and in many cases will save up and buy it. This is similar to a huge amount of people out there, and we are the reasons why these companies continue to thrive and develop more and more advanced new and old technologies.

Examples of the Old and New Nokia 3210: The Nokia 3210 was a highly popular mobile phone, which was first launched in 1999. The phone offered a combination of cutting-edge (at the time of release) features such as vibrating ring alert, T9 (predictive text) and built-in antennas.This phone included 3 games (one being a game called 'snake' which is still the most famous mobile phone game), changeable fascias and customisable ringtones that led to the 3210 being a very popular phone in the 15-25s age bracket. I remember when this phone was released and I was desperate to have one. It is one of the most memorable phones of my childhood and was definitely the start of trying to attract more and more people to start using mobile phones.

The next step was to add different functions over the next 8 years to produce what we are using today.Below I will give an example of the latest in mobile phone technology, the new Apple Mac Mobile Phone; Apple Mac Phone: To the right you will see instantly just how much mobiles phones have advanced within 8 years. Just from the picture you will notice the smoother design, use of metal and glass instead of plastic and the lack of buttons. "iPhone combines three amazing products - a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching - into one small and lightweight handheld device.Phone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.

" From the information above the iPhone is clearly a far superior mobile phone compared to those we were using 8 years go. In 1999, the common phone included calling, texting, primitive games and simple ringtones.The new Apple iPhone includes calling, video, video calling, mp3 (in fact not only an mp3 player its an iPod which is also one of the best and most common mp3 players on the market), media messaging, web surfing, touch screen, camera and probably more functions I am unaware of. This is definitely the best phone on the market to date however I have no doubt that phones will carry on developing for many years to come. Fast Facts and Figures Telephones * One third of the world population has never made a telephone call.That is still quite a lot of people yet to make a telephone call, although I don't think it will be long until that ratio is much smaller.

* While Sub-Saharan Africa contains about 10% of the world's population, it accounts for only 0. 2% of the world's 1 billion telephone lines. * The cost of renting a telephone connection on the African continent averages about 20 percent of GDP per capita compared to a world average of 9 percent and an average of only 1 percent in high-income countries.* There are fewer than 5 telephones per 100 people in India.

* In the world, there are over 1. 2 billion fixed telephone lines, 1. billion cellular subscribers and 140 billion international telephone traffic minutes each year. Mobile Telephones * As of 2002, mobile subscribers worldwide have outnumbered fixed-line subscribers. The mobile cross-over has taken place across geographic criteria, across socio-demographic criteria such as gender, income, or age, and across economic criteria. I find it quite interesting to see that the amount of mobile phones is greater than the amount if land line subscribers due to the fact I would imagine a mobile phone being much more of an expense to run and much fewer people being able to afford one.

But at what price do you put expense over practicality? I know a lot of people that would even feel as though they couldn't carry on their every day life without their mobile in their pocket. Without mobile phones, the world would be a different place and being only 20 I find it hard to remember what life was like without them. This again proves just how much the mobile phone revolution is taking place and it wont be long before everyone you know possesses a mobile phone. * Brazil has the same number of cellular phone subscribers as the whole of Africa combined.Asia, with 450 million subscribers, has twice the number of subscribers as the Americas combined. There are 836.

5 million mobile subscribers in OECD countries. * While the United States has 199 million cell phone subscribers, it is not part of the top ten countries with the highest percentage of mobile subscribers. 55% of the US population are mobile subscribers. I was quite surprised by this, as I would have assumed the US to at least be in the top 10 countries as I feel that they are definitely within the top 10 when it comes to technology.

However the size of America is quite large and open so maybe its size is relevant to the statistic results, although this would be voided by the result of Asia having over double the amount of mobile phones than the US. * Africa holds only 3% of the world's mobile subscribers, yet Africa is the first place where mobile subscribers outnumbered fixed-line subscribers. In five years (1997-2002), the number of cell phone subscribers in Africa grew by 1600%. Looking at this statistic it is quite clear how the use of mobile phones, even in poorer countries has rapidly increased in only 5 years.Thinking about this statistic, I feel further development of newer mobile phone technology will result in poorer countries being able to get hold of older models and increasing statistic even more. * Nicaragua has more than 3 times more mobile phone subscribers than fixed land lines (739 thousand compared with 214 thousand).

* The number of mobile subscriptions per 100 people in a given country range from 120 in Luxembourg, to . 44 in Malaysia, 24 in Jordan, 13 in Palestine, 3 in Nigeria et 0. 7 in Tajikistan.