ABSTRACT
Advanced informing technologies now enable decision makers from the building industry to inform themselves and their colleagues better. Many progressive practices now do this fairly well with general office automation and computer based practice management facilities (electronic mail, word-processing, spread sheets, d.t.p., billing, critical path analyses and specification writing, etc.) and by making use of computer aided drafting/design CAD) techniques now commonly available at all levels within the industry. This paper assumes a knowledge of this now conventional use of information technology and turns its attention to currently emerging technologies. It discusses the potentials of exciting new developments in voice recognition, networking, massive database access and especially interactive multi-media. With respect to the latter interactive media, there is a particularly full discussion of the comparative merits and performance of interactive videodisc, compact disc (CD-DA, CD ROM and CD ROM – XA and CDI) and Digital Video Interactive. An attempt is also made to show how each of these different informing systems could be used to improve busy building professionals’ understanding of technical/social issues, as well as improving the communication between themselves – to make the technology truly an informing part of their building team lives. At the seminar video and videodisc presentations were used to give practical demonstrations of the different systems.
