Introduction page 3

In the same way that technological innovation like the telephone has not replaced other forms of dialogue, the Living Garden is not intended to be a substitute for other social and technological modes of communication. Rather, the aim is to provide an additional channel which can add to the ways in which people can talk to each other. The Living Garden does this simply by providing a means by which anyone may record personal messages (in a variety of forms) which are ultimately delivered within any one of a number of landscape settings.

It is important to be clear that the garden part of the Living Garden is very much a real garden - convincing people of this fact is always the most difficult task when they first hear of the idea. The reasons for using an natural, open landscape will, I hope, become apparent over the course of the following pages.

The Living Garden is, then, a vehicle which aims to take us away from what currently seem like narrow and inadequate definitions and uses of technology for technology's sake. The desire to drive off at high speed, willy-nilly, in panic and frustration from this starting point marked by 2-D computer screens, autoexec.bat files and noisy, expensive computer hardware - to go almost anywhere else - is understandable enough. I hope, however, that in the following pages the reader will see how the Living Garden serves not just as sketch map which may help us escape from where we are, but which can also provide a compass to point us in the direction of a less cluttered and confused environment. Something which takes us towards fresh horizons which throw light not just on new ways of using developing technology, but which - most importantly - should start to make us ask questions about whose needs and what priorities are shaping the multimedia landscape of today.