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Interactive Technology

financial statements in reports to stockholders. These local libraries and college classrooms to the worldwide
nonfinancial measures include information on such items Internet. All these, like the telegraph, use digital coding,
as revenue percentage per employee, employees who have not analog words.
contact with customers, satisfied customers, research and The interactivity of e-mail and electronic bulletin
development costs, continuing education and training per boards has contributed greatly to the popularity of the
employee, employee turnover, and employee satisfaction. Internet. Mail or telephone communications are fine for a
One of the best known of the performance measurement one-on-one discussion, but they are pretty expensive if
strategies that imply the existence of intellectual capital is one is trying to communicate with a group. It costs nearly
called the balanced scorecard. It creates measures in the a dollar to print and mail a letter and, on average, that
financial, customer, internal business process, and learn- much for a long-distance phone call. To make such a call,
ing and growth areas. one has to know the number and to have coordinated a
Those who wish to have a more comprehensive, real- time to talk. So it takes considerable time and effort to
istic reporting of what provides value to businesses will contact even a modest-size group. On an electronic bul-
continue to pay attention to intangible assets. letin board, all one has to do is type a message once and it
is available to all readers.
SEE ALSO Copyrights; Franchising; Human Resources;
Patents; Trademarks
LINEAR VERSUS NONLINEAR
TECHNOLOGY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
One way to understand the benefits brought about by
Andriassen, D. (2004). Making sense of intellectual capital:
Designing a method for the valuation of intangibles. Burling- interactive technology is to compare linear and nonlinear
ton, MA: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann. multimedia. An example of linear multimedia is the typi-
Financial Accounting Standards Board (2001). Statement of cal presentation that combines video and sound, but with-
financial accounting standards no. 141: Business combinations. out choices. You watch it from beginning to end. Users are
Norwalk, CT: Author. reacting to, not reacting with, what they see.
Financial Accounting Standards Board (2001). Statement of Nonlinear, interactive multimedia combine the same
financial accounting standards no. 142: Goodwill and other technologies as linear ones, but with a twist. The viewer is
intangible assets. Norwalk, CT: Author.
hands-on, controlling what is viewed. Nonlinear multi-
Kaplan, Robert S., and Norton, David P. (1996). The balanced media are more complex to produce, because cogent
scorecard. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
vignettes must be worked through and likely viewer
Lev, B. (1997, Spring). The intangibles research project. Journal choices must be logically mapped out before the presenta-
of Financial Statement Analysis, 2, 34–36.
tion. Distribution is also then limited to technology that
can be dynamic in the presentation. For this category, one
Bernard H. Newman must pay greater attention to the interface methodology
used that will let the viewer control the experience.

USES OF INTERACTIVE
TECHNOLOGY
INTERACTIVE
The uses of interactive technology are varied. They are uti-
TECHNOLOGY lized in such varied circumstances as education, training,
Interactive is a new buzzword, but its sense is ancient, a lot marketing, and information gathering.
more ancient than that of the telephone or telegraph. The
interesting scientific question now is: How long have peo- Education and Training. Computers with social inter-
ple been using words and sentences to communicate with faces present information in such a way that it is cus-
each other? Humans are not passive animals; they are very tomized for the particular user. Different learning rates are
communicative. accommodated, because computers are able to pay indi-
The only 100 percent interactive (audio) technology vidual attention to independent learners. Regardless of
remains today as it was at its beginning in 1875: the tele- ability or disability, each user will be able to work at an
phone—if interactive means truly equal two-way or individual pace.
multiple-way communication. Telegraphy, however, offers The interactive network allows learners to quiz
even more parallels with today’s world than the telephone. themselves anytime in a risk-free environment. A self-
It prefigured a major nonaudio trend in our current inter- administered quiz is a form of self-exploration. A mistake
activity: computer nets which range from those used in will not call forth a reprimand; it will trigger the system to

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BUSINESS AND FINANCE, SECOND EDITION 399