History & Futures: The Vision

History

The history of Compact Disc is not very long. In fact, many of the people who helped start the industry are still active in it. We plan to explore the history and the contributions of many of the people who have made it possible in this section, but we also want to look forward.

Part of this section will be devoted to sketches of industry pioneers. Those we are working on now include interviews with Doug Carson of DCA, Allen Adkins of Optical Media International, and Fabrizio Caffarelli of Incat Systems. Many more are planned to help fill in the matrix of events and technical advances with human stories. The CD Pioneers section is now online as of 1/17/97.

Commentary

History is an organized selective look at the past, and commentary of contemporary observers is one of the important resources for historians. This section is the repository for our collection of articles by writers in the field, who are not only reporting on events, but helping shape them with their analyses.

Dana Parker

Dana has been a contributor to this site nearly since its inception, but now we are collecting links to all her articles here and adding more to create a reference page to her cogent comments. [The link page will be online soon.] She has been writing about CD-ROM, CD-R and DVD since 1990, and before that was a technician in the field. Please see Dana's "contributor's splashsheet" for more information about her accomplishments and other publishing credits.

Dana's articles in this site are:

The Rest of the Rest of the Story: Shedding Some Coherent Light on CD-R 2/9/97
Comments on LA Times DVD Story 8/8/96
High Density CD Format Compromise Reached 9/15/95

Norman Desmarais

A collection of articles on the present and future of information professionals and the practice of information management using CD-ROM has been contributed by Norman Desmarais. Norm has been writing about CD-ROM for years, and was the editor in chief of CD-ROM Librarian, which later became CD-ROM World magazine. He has been a contributor to CD-ROM Profressional magazine (now e-Media Professional) as well as to many other publications.

An Information Professional Looks at the Future 4/28/96
What is the "CD-ROM Librarian"? 4/28/96
Computers 1, Knowledge and Common Sense 0? (1994) 4/28/96
Electronic Carriage or Horseless Book? (1994) 4/28/96
Virtual, Interactive Literature (1991) 4/28/96
Adventures in Beta Testing CD-ROMs (1989) 4/28/96

Katherine Cochrane

Self-publishing gives us the luxury of indulging in a bit of editorializing as well as discussing our expectations for the future of electronic publishing and optical media. These are my contributions to the genre known as "vanity press."

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