Frankly, a definition is, at best, nebulous. It's more a technological trend and accompanying philosophy. We are being deluged by the coverage of multimedia. For example, videography magazines, graphics journals, and, of course, computer journals are talking about it. Even major newspapers and magazines like the Washington Post and NewsWeek are allocating significant coverage to multimedia.
Multimedia seems to have made a revolutionary debut overnight.
To the contrary, multimedia has been around for almost 10 years, thus placing it in more of an evolutionary rather than revolutionary track. Before it could become a reality, several things had to occur. First, technology had to reach a point where it could handle the disparate computer media. Large, fast hard disks and CD-ROMs are needed to handle these capacity requirements. Additionally, without the advancements in graphic display capabilities, the delivery of multimedia would not have the same impact.