Dear Reader,

During a recent foray through a closet to reallocate some shelf space, I was assailed by several impudent dust balls and then unexpectedly found myself face-to-face with a large box of photographs.

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Upon opening it, I was transported to a hill in Boston, a million years younger, with snow in my hair, watching my two very young daughters propelling down a slope on a sled.

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Rifling through, I found lobsters loose on the floor one Christmas (to our dogs's dismay), the girls feeding ducks in Boston Garden, and relived the heat, wind, and smell of diesel fuel during a July 4th boat ride to George's Island a life time ago.

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Images have power. They are the virtual memories - the fragmented stuff of our individual and combined histories . . .

As the castaways on the CBS television drama/game show "Survivor" continue to muck about the azure beaches of Pulau Tiga, conspiring to knock each other off the island, the digital imaging industry is winding down its own summer games.

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There is a difference. New players on the digital wave are continuously joining the fray; everyone has a shot at the grand prize; and the "tribal council" is the millions of end users filling the world with fanciful images.

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Forget the "Tagi Alliance," . . .

A large box, from a major photographic manufacturer, recently landed on the desk of Associate Editor Michael Sheridan, as we discussed the next issue of Digital Imaging.

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"It's heavy, maybe it's a new camera," he suggested. "Open it," I commanded, as I fought back a wave of [first to see the latest coolest] camera envy. Michael gave a low whistle. "It's a coconut," he told me. With a note on a piece of cardboard box tied to a string."

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With the country emmersed in a "Survivor" craze, and our very own Special Sections Editor Jennifer Gidman already on Survivor Two's list of 48,000 wannabees, the package was an adept marketing ploy. . . 

Be it economic Zeitgeist or the inherent volatility of new technology, high-tech and e-commerce stocks have been bungee-jumping and causing investors to hold their breath or sell before the bottom drops out. Despite the e-volatility, however, the imaging industry has been chugging along like the little engine that could.

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Unpredictability is not always bad . . .

Summer 2000 has just stepped into the batter's box and is already in a league of its own. Atlanta hurler Johnny Rocker has been knocked from the mound and is pitching sliders for a minor league team in Virginia. Microsoft is heading for Splitsville, if U.S. District Judge Thomas Pennfield Jackson gets his way. And sportscasters are suggesting an apocalypse - or at the very least a conspiracy - if baseball players don't stop hitting the ball over the fence. (As of this writing, home runs were at an average of 2.6 per game this season, with a record 57 going over the fence in a single day's games.)

Winter is at worst, showing just a bit of tail on its way out. Y2K was a bust - minus unconfirmed rumors of Vegas slot machines spewing out dough (I can think of worse things). And the digital revolution has peaked, leaving in its wake a fallout of innovations and services that have digital imagers scrambling to find the latest, and most innovative products to catapult them from capturing a digital file to printing or publishing it on the World Wide Web.

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Houston Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed . . .