Multimedia: is it always better?

As with almost every new medium and technology, we become enchanted with it and very easily take the proclaimed benefits of the new creation for granted. Slide presentation tools are one example. Since they became available, most of the presentations in the technical and professional communities have transitioned into using it. One of the reasons is that they make the preparation ("production") of presentations and presenting it seem easy. Making the content of the presentation understood and getting its messages across, however, is another matter. The big question with presentation tools is- when is it better to use it and when other modes of presentation are more appropriate? Now that almost everyone can produce a multimedia presentation, a similar trend might be developing. This mindless transition, I feel, must be stopped. First and foremost, we need to understand what are the advantages and, yes, the disadvantages of multimedia. Since multimedia use and production are human centered activities, practical knowledge of how humans beings perceive, process information, and understand is essential to understanding these advantages and disadvantages of this medium. Once we know the advantages and disadvantages of multimedia, we should use it only when it offers advantages to a particular presentation over other media. Sometimes, we might find out that a simple oral (or even audio) presentation without a single visual might do the trick. Sometimes- not. As Neal Postman pointed out, for example, it could be more difficult to effectively present a series of logical arguments using video than with text or oral deliberations. On other occasions, we might find out that a silent presentation of pictorial slides might deliver the message quite effectively. Multimedia is not only about presentation. It is also about production and thinking. As with writing or drawing, composing a multimedia vignette could help the creative and critical thinking process about a topic. This too needs an understanding of when multimedia is appropriate and when it's not. The developer community is not exempt from the need to develop this type of understanding. Without it, the tools will not be very useful. All of these communities, the multimedia users, the production crowd, and the multimedia developer community need to become more multimedia literate through training in school, college, and work or through a personal transformative quest. This, I believe, is essential yet possible.