Caruso's final frontier is what she calls video telephonya complete two-way link of video,audio and data. A user might stand in front of a monitor receiver and just talk and listen,communicating with whatever or whomever is Out There. Images and voices would be beamed back and forth. (At the very least,it would probably mean the end of anonymous obscene phone calls. ) There is no exact analogy to any technology we've seen before,says Red Burns,chair of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. Inter active means we are all involved. There is no viewer. Interactive is like a conversation.
卡鲁索的最终目标是她所称的电视电话，也就是一种集图像、声音和信息于一体的完全的双向通讯联络技术。这种电话的使用者只需站在电视接收器前即可与对方通话，并且声音和形象都能双向传递。(这样至少会结束打匿名猥亵电话的行为。)我们以前所见的任何一项技术都不能与之相提并论，纽约大学相互作用通讯工程研究室主任雷德o伯恩说。相互作用意味着我们大家全都参与其中，没有谁是旁观者。相互作用即是相互交流。
Interactivity may be the biggest buzzword of the moment,but convergence is a close second. It means different things to different people. To the moneymen,it means that everything will come together and they'll clean up. To scientists,it means that the technology has reached a critical point where fantasy could now become reality. Nicholas Negroponte,director of MIT's Media Lab,a leading think tank in this new world,remembers that back in the 1970s,a government agency gave him a grant on the condition that he remove the word multimedia from his proposal. They were afraid we would get one of Proxmire's Golden Fleece awards,he says. Now,politicians,from President Clinton on down,are falling over themselves to proclaim support for the new medium.
相互作用可能是目前使用频率最高的词，而辐合则紧随其后。该词的含义因人而异。对于金融家来说，它意味着一切都会趋于集中，而他们即可囊括一切。对科学家们来说，它意味着科学技术已发展到了使幻想变为现实的临界点。这一新领域的第一号智囊库--麻省理工学院媒介实验室主任尼古拉o尼格罗邦特回忆说，七十年代中，某政府机构在拨款支持他的研究计划时曾附加条件令他勿用多媒体一词。他们怕我们会得到(参议员)普罗斯麦的金羊毛奖，他说。但如今，自克林顿总统起，大小各级官员都纷纷表示他们支持这一新媒体。
These dreams are possible because researchers have made vast leaps in both the quality and quantity of data transmittal.
这些梦想之所以可能成为现实是因为科研人员在技术上所取得的进步使信息传播在质量上和数量上都大大提高了。