Eyewitnesses to an era of transformation

While putting together this issue after last month’s Digital World ‘92 conference, it struck me that we are eyewitnesses to the transformation of an era.

Every speaker from every industry acknowledged that we are indeed witnessing a sea change in human communication. Because of digital technology, all media of communication — television (both broadcast and cable), telephones, print, books and magazines, music, video, and traditional art — are converging on a digital standard.

While this convergence is helping reshape a world that’s moving from an industrial economy to one based on information, it is also moving society into uncharted territory in the areas of intellectual property, rights to privacy and fair use, and access to technology for the less privileged.

It is not often that people have an open forum to discuss the enormity of the issues facing them in this new age; this has been the charter of Digital World since Seybold sponsored the first conference in 1990. What we have attempted to do in this special issue of Digital Media is provide you with context. After three days at Digital World, zooming in on the specifics in this much-discussed “convergence” of industries, the following pages zoom out to provide you with the larger view.

Some of the best known and most respected executives in the convergence industries — consumer electronics, computers, cable television, telecommunications, entertainment and publishing — delivered keynote presentations and participated in thought-provoking panel discussions during the conference. The meetings were sometimes contentious, often contradictory, and always thought provoking.

Digital Media’s editors covered them all.

We hope you’ll enjoy reading this month’s issue as much as we enjoyed writing it. The opportunity to go back and relive, in a sense, the events that took place during those three days made all of us realize just how remarkable are the times in which we live.

No matter what else we learned, it is crystal clear that we are now at the crux of the digital transformation. There’s no more doubt that it is happening — all the convincing has been done.

It is now up to the players themselves to work out how they will converge, compete and, eventually, deliver their version of the future. We hope they understand that their ability to collaborate with each other — and their customers — will decide the ultimate success of their ventures.

Most of all, we hope they realize the enormous social implications of what they do. The fruits of their labors today will have an enormous impact on how we work, play, learn and govern ourselves in the 21st century.

Denise Caruso, Editor