The starting point for the quotation given above is the portrayal of a modern world in which multimedia pervades, indeed dominates, communication. Little in ‘modern life’ is conveyed, the quotation suggests, without the help or influence of multimedia technology. This quotation derives from a conference and publication focusing on the relationship and significance of such technologies to universities and the precise phrasing of this quotation raises several issues. There is the use of the collective ‘we’, with its implication that all readers, indeed everyone, will identify with the conditions and sentiments described. Then there is the statement that ‘multimedia carries the messages of society’, as though the business of human communication has become entirely monopolized by multimedia technologies. Other word choices are revealing: ‘beamed through space’ invokes a cosmic scale of change and impact; and ‘gathered together on screens’ implies an almost animate quality to the media being discussed, a dynamic presence in this new age of communication. Multimedia, this comment says, goes beyond the global, provides the mesh of communication for society and offers us a path into our future.