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Content stored traditionally (in books and paper, for
example) is tied in large part to the physical media itself. Because of physical
restrictions, a book cannot be accessed by more than one person simultaneously with ease.
But consider what happens when it is possible to divorce information from the physical
medium itself; when the representation of information is not tied to the medium itself but
can be moved off, copied, and transferred with ease--all without a loss of precision or
quality. The popularity of desktop computers connected on the Internet has gone a long way toward the separation of content from the media, but this separation is not perfect. Bandwidth problems plague connections to the Internet, computer programs typically still execute on a local system's storage media, and large chunks of content (digital music, movies, and multimedia programs) are only now beginning to appear--at very low quality--on the Internet. For the highest quality of content distribution, the medium of choice is optical discs: compact discs (CDs) and the newest standard, digital versatile discs (DVDs). |