Response to History of Multimedia Practices
In 1985, around the time my mother was gestating me, Scott Fisher was concerned with creating multi-sensory modes of interaction. He termed the world "telepresence" (seems not to have caught on in contemporary discourse concerning multimedia) which he described as "the projection of the self into a virtual world."
About a decade before Fisher was thinking about stimulating all senses during virtual experiences Myron Krueger was creating alternative modes of interacting with virtual worlds. Krueger, while not really appreciated by the art world, created art pieces and theories concerned with the idea that the response was the medium. I find it very interesting that a lot of Kruegers work took place at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Most of his pieces where concerned with the arts some even included interactive art drawing - however he was never embraced by the art community. It seems that his work was the "pandoras box" of many multimedia art projects today- and even of the past (Marcel Duchamp- A piece of art is not complete without the perception of the viewer)
I feel that multimedia practices will slowly become more in tune with natural processes. More and more we are finding that nature has provided designers and scientists with the most efficient solutions to problems. I feel that the future of technology (to broaden the scope of this prediction) will be taught to us by what nature we will have left!!