ABSTRACT
Narrative media are the linear presentational media that include print (text and graphics) audio, usually audiocassette, audiovision (an audiocassette talk accompanied by some separate visual material), broadcast television or film, and videocassette or digital disc. These presentational media share the core common property that they are non-interactive, which distinguishes them from all the computer-based media. It is a feature that Socrates recognised as a failing in an educational medium, by comparison with interactive dialogue:
I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing has one grave fault in common with painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of books. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you require any explanation of something that has been said, they preserve one unvarying meaning.
