The beginning of
Brhad by R. Nagaswamy
To reach
beyond time and space has been man’s aspiration from the beginning of human
history. He wanted to communicate and preserve his thoughts, words and deeds not
only to those who were immediately present within his reach but also far beyond and also
separated by centuries. The first revolution in this direction was the discovery of
writing through which he could record his thought and with this begins the historic
age. In the Indian context the Vedic sages invented the sophisticated technique of
communication and personalities were trained to commit to memory the thought of by gone
ages through a unique system developed to adhere to the original words, their order, their
intonations etc., by the vedic pada pathas ghana, jata patahas. This system no doubt
has preserved the thoughts and poetry of those ages for the four thousand or more
years. Judging from its survival for such long years, it has been a great
achievement, has served the civilization admirably and will continue to fascinate a select
few. In-spite of perfect mastery, various schools arose in different parts of India
giving rise to several recensions and also an urge to question to what degree the attempts
to explain the originality of content through commentaries are correct. This was
mainly due to imperfection of the human media. the volume of conflicting
commentaries make it evident that there was concern over loss of knowledge and also the
grasp of ancient thoughts.
The introduction of writing around 3rd cent B.C. shifted
the process of transmission and preservation from human to mechanical media. Writing
enabled now the thoughts to be preserved as originally conceived. It was necessarily
confined to the written lines but enabled several persons to know form a single
source. The introduction of writing was not accepted by the orthodox who
insisted that the traditional system of oral transmission was superior and sacred and
looked down upon the writing system. medieval commentaries in Tamil say that writing
was invented for those who can not mentally visualize and retain forms. the Vedas
transmitted through oral tradition are called “Literature not committed to
writing” . However the increasing complexities of life and administration of
the state properties and settlement of disputes soon led to pre-eminence of written
sources than oral tradition. The dharma sastra (law treatises) and the
administrative treatises like artha-sastra fave first pre-reference to written deed than
to verbal testimony. The lekhya-pramana was the foremost instrument of evidence of
conveying original concepts.
The evolution of script and the vast body of material,
written on perishable materials posed the problem of imperfect grasp or loss of knowledge
through the centuries. Also, all thoughts and sound could not be reduced to writing
which had its limitations. The discovery of photography, initially black and white,
later colour, helped in recording still images but with the discovery of movies, made it
possible to record moving images. Supplemented by the discovery of audio recording,
it was possible to record the movements, thoughts and colours. The discovery of
videos made the recordings within the reach of the all and shifted the expertise from
highly specialised studies to the common man.
The computer revolution now taking place make the mind to
perceive multi dimensions of all human thoughts, achievements and endeavour through a
single instrument at tremendous speed, efficiency and authenticity; enables larger and
ever increasing number of personalities to avail this opportunities to learn, utilise and
plan for future endeavour. In fact it disciplines the thinking process of human mind
and gives scope for greater appreciation of arts, thoughts and science. The paper
will discus how this is helpful in appreciating art and architecture.
Multimedia : a learning
experience with special reference to Indology by P. S. Filliozat
Paper
The present
paper aims at analysing the experience of an Indologist who participated as content-expert
in the production of a CD-ROM on a temple of Karnataka. It has been a learning experience
for him, in the sense that it has been an occasion for reflection on his methods of work
with a view to adapt them to the use of the new and powerful tool which the computer
promises to be.
Any researcher in the field of humanities disciplines is
trained in preparing a book. Preparing a CD-ROM is obviously a different exercise. The
contrast between both activities is analysed in the following fields:
1.1 Writing vs. digitisation of text
1.2 Drawing vs. digitisation of graphic data
1.3 Photography and video vs. digitisation of visual data
1.4 Recording vs. digitisation of sound data
2. Indexing and card-making vs. database management
3. Comparative research vs. automatic linking
The book has a few handicaps which can be compensated by
the computer. The most promising facilities offered by the new tool are the high variety
of multimedia modes of display of data and interactivity devices. On one side the author
has more facilities to deliver his message. On the other the user has more scope of
personal activity.
The expectations of researchers from Multimedia are
therefore high. They arise in the course of research and at the time of presentation.
Research in most humanities disciplines means exploring data of diverse types, texts,
script, archæological visual material in the form of designs or photographs, sound
documents spoken or musical etc. The aim is to correlate data and discover common
structures or distinctive features. The researcher sees multimedia tools as a powerful
tool to explore a large quantity of data, to consult and search items, to compare and sort
out.
Difficulties are met with, as soon as the preparation of a
CD-ROM is undertaken. Solutions offered appear as constraints imposed on him. In general
the researcher starts the work with the concept of a traditional book in his mind. To
enter into the world of multimedia, he has to make himself aware of requirements of a
CD-ROM such as:
adaptation of the contents to the design of
windows,
break down of the contents in screen-wise presentation, vs.
the continuous flow of the book,
requirement of images, for each screen, vs. the book
frequent disposition of a mass of text followed by plates grouped together
separately,
requirement of sound in connexion with a screen, in a
convenient time-limit,
multiplicity of links to be predetermined, etc.
The new tool will definitely lead researchers and users
towards new directions. Profitable or detrimental. Right from now, we may examine it. It
seems that the incitation to interactivity is the greatest benefit to be derived from the
CD-ROM. But the breaking down of knowledge in small units to which database management and
screen-wise presentation are leading to, may be a drawback, as being detrimental to the
continuity and strength of thinking.
Computer aided cognition by
Sanjay Goel goelsan@yahoo.com
( Download PDF
file)
Paper
Communication
technology has been history’s driving force. To support human communication, the
electronics industry has made significant progress in Telecommunication, Consumer &
Entertainment Electronics and Computers. The Publishing industry has undergone a
revolution in the last twenty years because of the integration of the Printing Press with
Computers. Until recently computers did not support high capacity, portable content
storage devices. Because of this limitation, computers could not be used as
communication and educational medium. Their usage remained confined to data
processing, information systems, physical process modelling and control
applications. With the increased processing power and storage capacity, a new
communication medium has become available. Computer based “Interactive
Multi-media” is now facilitating the simulation, extension and integration of various
communication technologies to facilitate multi-sensory communication and
learning.
Technologies are not mere exterior aids but also interior
transformations of consciousness. The form and the structure of the discourse has
been influenced by the affordances of different tools. All communication
technologies have their strengths and weaknesses that are gradually realised after some
years of initial experimentation with the technology as a communication medium. It took
several decades of book printing for a useful and generally acceptable book form to emerge
out of the tradition of costly medieval manuscripts. For several years, motion picture
directors continued to use the new medium as theatre, and it took quite some time for
producers to stop using television as glorified radio. Interactive multi-media
technology also will soon be able to create a niche place for itself out of the legacy of
the earlier media.
Computers offer interesting novel possibilities of
interactivity and of integration of data, information, analytical interpretations and
creative expressions. The issues being addressed by researchers and practitioners engaged
in the area of Interactive Multimedia can be broadly abstracted as follows:
- Recording, Rendering, Transmission, Storage and Retrieval of
Multimedia Data, Information, Analytical interpretations & Creative expressions.
- Synthesis of Multimedia Information, Analytical
interpretations & Creative expressions.
- Analysis of Multimedia Data, Analytical interpretations
& Creative expressions.
- Design and development of Multimedia Communication Systems.
Amongst other social activities, education ranks very high
as one of the main beneficiaries of advancements in communication technologies. But
unfortunately, it has not been the first to take advantage of some of the key
advancements. It is the entertainment industry which has made the largest investments in
applying the upcoming communication technologies. Though cognition is an internal
and subjective process, it gets greatly effected by the way the study material is
made available to the learner. Technology, if appropriately applied, can support
cognition and enhance the learning. The design requirements of educational software using
any of these technologies are not the same as that of an entertainment software. While
media experts can exploit the communication technologies for developing entertainment and
informative software, the educationists themselves must play the main role in designing
and developing the software for pedagogical purposes.
High duplication costs of the non-textual study material
has been a major deterrent against democratised learning. This problem can now be solved
by the digital technology because rapidly reducing duplication cost of digital content is
media independent. It is now feasible to provide instant access to large amount of
duplicated primary content to much larger population in a very cost effective
manner. Rapidly decreasing costs of multi-media ready computers will soon take them
to almost all middle class families of most of the countries. Educational software will
take a major share of computer software on such home computers.
The recently developed and quickly expanding field of
Cognitive psychology throws a very useful light on the learning process. A closer look
into the process opens up interesting opportunities to the designers of Interactive
Multimedia Educational Software. Learning is multistage process and results into formation
of higher level mental constructs known as Cognitive Maps. Oriented learner gradually
makes a transition from an intelligent but mostly passive receiver to an active
information collector and finally to a researcher. Different kind of cognitive
activities are performed during different stages. Learning results into mental encoding of
knowledge which is internally represented by multidimensional higher level mental
constructs known as Cognitive Maps. Faithful external representation of these
internal cognitive maps results into efficient teaching. A novel generic knowledge
representation scheme to externalise the Cognitive Maps has been formulated and
applied to all the ongoing projects by our group.
Digital technology is helping us to redefine the notion of
the book from a static and linear collection of limited visual content to a dynamic and
non-linear corpus of large body of multimedia content. The proposed model has evolved out
of the desire to support the learning process at all stages and extend the
‘Book’ paradigm. Computers ability to store large volumes of instantly available
data, to represent any structure or behaviour, and, to integrate multiple elements are
three underlying strengths on which this model is based upon. It tries to harness
the power of interactive multimedia by offering extensive study material and pedagogical
tools. Special attention has been paid to enhance the interactivity. Effective mechanisms
have been proposed to facilitate uniform and quick exploration, rendering and analysis of
large digital corpus of primary, secondary and tertiary content. In short, the proposed
model tries to free the ‘Book’ from the constraints of the paper.
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