Extending the map metaphor using web delivered multimedia

The use of multimedia by cartographers has enabled new and exciting products to be designed and produced. These 'New Media' artefacts range from products that do nothing more than offer picture book 'page turning' CD-ROM publications that require almost no user interaction to highly interactive packages delivered via the World Wide Web. In spite of the potential afforded by new presentation media and delivery mechanisms, most presentations of geographical information continue to rely on traditional map-based forms of information delivery. Should cartographers stop at distributed multimedia cartographic information products that only use the map metaphor? Or should they explore the other metaphorical avenues that distributed multimedia affords. Multimedia technology has now matured to enable multimedia cartography to be produced to more effectively portray and communicate user-targeted geographical information. This paper proposes that distributed multimedia cartography should explore the possibilities offered by this new conglomerate medium and define both the potential uses of such a powerful geographical information depiction tool and the limitations that should perhaps be placed on using the medium in a cartographic context.