The interconnection between bits, people, and things in an on-line world.

Digital Life is a multi-sponsor research consortium formed in January 1997. 16 faculty, over 90 graduate students, and 54 companies from around the world jointly define the research issues and participate in the work. Represented industries include telecommunications, media, transactions, advertising, publishing, consumer electronics, and computing.

We set the research agenda via full-member meetings twice a year at the Media Laboratory and through continuous interaction with our sponsors. Visitors are always welcome, and we hold periodic workshops to describe current work and to address issues of sponsor concern.

Global networks are changing our media, our communities, and our businesses. For most of the 20th century, the telephone dominated communications, television defined the living room, and schools built communities from children. The telephone is now threatened by computer networks, TV is going global and digital, and children are empowered members of society at large.

New technologies of bits and atoms are a driving force in this change because we can now design systems that respond to social and personal structures as well as impel them to change. The Digital Life program at the Media Laboratory invents and explores new forms of communities through research in structured media, learning, human expression, interfaces, and agents.

The cornerstones of Digital Life are:

1. Connections/Communities: Builds environments for collaboration, discovery, design, and casual global interactions.

2. Kids/Cultures: Includes learning, construction, design, and cooperation by kids and adults of all ages and for all reasons.

3. Actions/Interfaces: Explores speech, gestures, and motions as well as immersive communications environments.

4. Media/Performance: Defines structured representations of sounds and pictures, merges digital networks with entertainment, and evolves our notions of storytelling.