From the director
The Interactive Media Lab is a center for hands-on study of the
future of mass media and their interactive potential. Our focus
is not on pie-in-the-sky technology that may not even exist for
a
decade or more. We don’t ask many what if questions. Instead,
our research focuses on technology that exists now, or will in the near future,
and the questions we ask are how.
Our purpose is to help journalists and future journalists as well as newspapers, magazines, book publishers, radio and television broadcasters and other media make the transition to the two-way communications that will characterize the future. We believe this transition will be made as a series of small steps, not one giant one. Thus, we focus on the near term instead of the distant future.
Students in the Interactive Media Lab, from undergraduates through Ph.D candidates, receive hands-on instruction and experience in applying new technology to mass media. They learn to use today’s information networks in their daily lives for research, information, communication and entertainment. They learn by experience how to operate interactive news sites. And they learn to keep their focus just ahead of the next bend, where the next small step toward the future will be taken.