The Mac

 

Multimedia has been hailed both as a liberating energy for democracy and yet another cudgel to beat down the ignorant masses. The truth, not surprisingly, falls between the two.

Certainly, the early hope that CD-ROMs would become a cheap, accessible way for people to get information has not been realised. But Further Vision has helped to keep the drearn alive by using the format to re-invent a classic but now rare medium: the photoessay. Days Of Rage is the first of several titles combining images, words and statistics without the diluting effect of newspaper or magazine editorial staff and proprietors.

Days Of Rage is a collection of black-and-white photos taken by Judah Passow in Beirut between 1982 and 1985. These years saw the Lebanese capital torn apart by warring factions -Druze militia, Maronite Christians and others - who were often puppets for bigger players: Israel, the PLO, Syria and the US. Like Bosnia now, the war was of such ferocity that it seemed incomprehensible to all but a few.

Days Of Rage succeeds in explaining both the roots and the eventual unravelling of the war. It does this with an extensive glossary, illustrated statistics and two essays. Maps accompany the statistics, letting you locate the area occupied by each of the forces and see how boundaries changed as the war continued. None of this makes the package (which also includes a photo book) particularly easy going, but as ever, the compassion and spirit shown by so many is a miracle to behold.

Each photo comes with a caption and soundbites from Lebanese and Israeli viewpoints. Control buttons remain invisible at the bottom of the image so that the images speak for themselves, unencumbered by reminders that this is a CD-ROM. (To get the controls back, simply trail the mouse along the bottom of the page.) One of the few active features is a series of images linked together in a sequence, wrongly described as a movie.

Days Of Rage is certainly not the most sophisticated CD-ROM you'll come across in terms of flashy interfaces or smart-aleck navigation. But it is one of the more intelligent, accessible and impassioned, and makes a brave attempt at explaining the inexplicable - man's mad attempts to destroy himself.

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