Last update: 2003/07/14

"Digital Media" can already be considered as the largest project undertaken by mankind. It required the development of a large number of Digital Media Technologies and this actually happened in the last 3/4 of a century. There was expectation that Digital Media Technologies would trigger a Digital Media Revolution with promises of great benefits to society, because citizens would be offered a quantum leap in their ability of to communicate and to players on the value chain because they would find a wide range of opportunities.

As we leave the 10th year since Digital Media deployment actually began, we detect very few bright spots because, by and large, promises are not being delivered.

Even though the project "Digital Media" was never formally stated and was run in a largely uncoordinated fashion, the project existed in the minds of scientists, businessmen and Public Authorities.

Let's make the exercise of looking back to the project phases:

Dream	A project like Digital Media had a dream behind it. Let's make the dream explicit, knowing what technology can make possible today.
Technologies	An impressive range of technologies was needed to make the dream real. Let's see which they were and where we are in their development.
Promises	Technologies being available, it was natural to expect that people would start using them to make their versions of the dream real.
Disillusion	Today end users are dissatisfied, very few players on the value chain, if any, are having benefits and Public Authorities are concerned.
Analysis	If we want to mend our faults, let's study why things turned out the way they did.
Action	Some sample ideas of what the Digital Media Project should do.
Contributions	A call for contributions is open

Click on the links to get more detail, or start from Dream.

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