Television is in almost every living room in the country working over three hours every day - whether we're directly in front of it or not - and we've grown used to its peculiar language and habits over the last 40 years. So familiar, in fact, that the seamless flow of programming - the well-known faces and the chattering, incessant torrent of images, sounds and voices - has become almost "one of the family", perhaps even a replacement for the family groups who would gather around the radio or television in living rooms and kitchens of an earlier, postwar Australia. It seems that as the pace of urban life speeds up, so too does the relentless programming flow.

Now we have a whole new range of media - CD ROM games and information titles and the colourful and increasingly computer-based World Wide Web - largely inspired by the video games industry - introducing a faster-paced, more personal, more involving, style of using our televisions. And new environments call for new ways of looking at and talking about them - a new kind of language which both its creators and audiences alike can understand. In the end, we can hopefully anticipate a richer and more interesting television where the one-way monologue of broadcast radio and television becomes - gradually - more like a two-way dialogue.

To look at the present and future of this new idiom, the Australian Film Commission - the body responsible for assisting the development of our local film and television industry - is bringing together local and international artists and producers working in this new media around the idea of a "Language of Interactivity" at a three day conference beginning this week in Sydney. With both the federal and new Victorian governments firmly committed to developing this field through several multi-million dollar support schemes, and many other new media conferences and exhibitions on in Sydney this month, it seems this new language is enjoying a bit of a boom at the moment.

But, to mix metaphors, too many tongues can spoil the broth, and old and new languages live or die depending on how popular their use is - whether they give us more "utility" - features, information, enjoyment and useful choices. Many words will be spoken over the next few weeks - and for a long time yet - about this new kind of television. Some may be gibberish, full of jargon and acronyms - but some may also contain the seeds of new programs and new styles to sweep away the cobwebs that have gathered in the corners of our film and television industry, part of our screen culture.