The future in digital media computing is meta

In the early days much multimedia research focused on developing computer environments that interpret, manipulate, or generate audiovisual media in manual, semiautomatic, or automatic ways. Two major methodologies emerged, emphasizing either particular intrinsic aspects of the target media, or particular processes that users can perform on or with that media. These technological advances steadily infiltrated everyday media environments, including image editing tools (such as Photoshop; Illustrator; the GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP; and Maya), audio systems (such as Cubase VST), new media authoring tools (such as Director/Shockwave, Flash, Dreamweaver, and FrontPage), and Web presentation technology (such as HTML and SMIL). The results deeply changed how we exchange information.