Toward a Model of the Migration of Communication Between Media Devices

Abstract

The ever-increasing volume of information generated by humanity has been supported by our ability to invent devices that record, store, retrieve and communicate this information in a variety of media, presented by a variety of devices. Since new media devices are continually emerging, and each device has different utility, it is possible that a great deal of information will need to be migrated between media devices in order to take advantage of their utility. While computer programs that perform migration automatically would help to process the potential volume of information being migrated, such programs will require a model of the migration of communication between media devices. In this chapter, we propose such a model that is based on ideas from information theory and media modeling. The model represents a number of interacting components including: the dimensions and utility of the media device; the media of and structure of communication; and conversion functions between media devices. We evaluate it by applying it theoretically to one of the important tasks in digital libraries: the digitisation (migration) of a set of highly structured textbooks to hypertext. We argue that emerging web-technologies could assist the automatic migration of communication between media devices as long as specific components of the migration model are present in the information. Applications of this model lie in the preservation of digital libraries, which must be able to migrate between media devices in order to be immune to degradation and technological obsolescence.