At no time in history has multimedia technology had the prospect of making a stronger impact on cultures. Multimedia is everywhere: regardless of where we are we can access multimedia originating in many parts of the world as easily as we can create content to be shared with people from different cultures across the globe. The gap between the haves and the have-nots, however, is growing (the "we" above refers to a very few). Wealthier countries are using multimedia to reinforce physical boundaries(for example, requiring fingerprints and photographs at airports) and multimedia content from only a few cultures is proliferating.