ns@CAT.CMU.EDU (Nicholas Spies) (01/09/88)
What medium and what format do CD-ROM manufacturers like your data to be in to make a CD-ROM for you? Are there check discs for CD-ROM? Or do you build up your data on a CD-ROM WORM and then submit it for replication (but WORMs only use 100-250MB, which wouldn't fill stamped CD-ROM)? Who are good contacts to answer questions related to preparing data for making a CD-ROM (Phillips, Pioneer?). It seems that every show and talk I have been to about interactive videodisc, CD-ROM, CD-I, DVI etc has largely consisted of vague promises of information "too cheap to meter" that will revolutionize education, etc, but with very little technical substance. Worse, the so-called "authoring tools" I have seen (from IBM, Sony, DEC and others) are mode-bound, menu-driven, hardware-dependent bears to work with and whereas HyperCard holds great promise, it needs a standard high-level device interface (or at least guidelines for same) and of course is currently limited to the Mac universe. The whole question of creating and editing massive amounts of video and digital data (i.e. "authoring" on a broader scale) requires some thought and standards for hardware and software needed to make the equivalent of a video editing suite cum computer graphics studio cum database management system for creating interactive media on a production, rather than an "arts and crafts", basis. But instead of a unified approach to these formidable production problems, all I have heard is competing claims for incompatible delivery formats. Another sophistry is the "pennies per disc" argument to explain the cost-effectiveness of interactive media, ignoring completely the incompatible hardward/software issue and difficulties in putting such presentations together with the current tools. Perhaps it is time to devlop some models for general-purpose production tools for interactive media that are hardware-independent and that will survive the inevitable shake-out of the format wars and the constantly-changing base of microcomputers/workstations. This would seem to be the only way for end-users to stop being whiplashed by every wonderful new (incompatible) medium proferred by manufacturers. Nicholas Spies Center for Design of Educational Computing Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (412) 268-7641