For several reasons, both Media Lab Europe and the Digital Hub have figured in the news in the past few weeks.

The reasons for their newsworthiness prompt questions about intent, purpose, timescale, funding, and political will.

Media Lab Europe is the Guinness Hopstore-based independent spin-off of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. The Digital Hub, is the related, and somewhat diminished, project to turn the area surrounding the media lab into an international centre for digital media enterprise, research and creativity.

In plain English, that means the Government would like to see the Liberties area revitalised in an ambitious plan that would support new developments in computerised film, television, music, animation and internet technologies.

The media lab was always intended to be at the heart of the hub, or digital media district - that role is part of its brief as negotiated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And the development of the hub has become an important issue for Media Lab Europe, which at the moment is isolated in a stark area of the city that has little complementary development, except the nearby National College of Art and Design.

To date, we have learned little of the plans for the hub. Many have suspected that this is due to the inordinate amount of time and spin now devoted to sandbagging the National Stadium project - like the digital district, under the stewardship of Mr Paddy Teahon, who chairs Digital Media Development Ltd (DMDL), the hub's planners. Both projects also involve the consultants, Magahy and Co, whose principal, Lara Magahy, oversaw the development of Temple Bar.

Suspicions weren't dispersed with the publication last week of a DMDL "discussion document", available at www.thedigitalhub.com. Original plans were for a full development plan to be ready by last May - a deadline now pushed out to autumn - and the discussion document reads like a quick, stopgap exercise in getting something more substantive out into the vacuum than the previous small brochure. Generally, it expands in a fuzzy, if worthy sort of way on the existing fuzzy, if worthy proposals.

The document places a bit more flesh on the brochure's bones, but the concept is still dismayingly anorexic. While substantial and laudable discussions clearly have taken place with community groups and organisations and others pivotal to the development, the discussion document doesn't reflect this except with some broad gestures. Worse, it is thinnest in defining what should be two of its key elements: specific indications of where the media lab should and could fit in, and concrete proposals as to how both academia and enterprise will contribute, benefit and spur development.

Many of the academics and businesses one would expect to have been included in the consultations over the eight months since the hub's announcement say they still know little or nothing about the project. Yet, dynamic input, a broad research base, and private sector funding and development will be essential, especially as the Taoiseach admitted recently, under prodding from Labour that the project has been stripped back from a £100 million (€127 million) to a £60-million budget.

The budget reduction is not necessarily a worry - it can grow as the project snowballs, and arguably, such a development should emerge organically out of business and research commitment, not by creating a Government and agency-sponsored, closely-controlled artificial support system. Still, it seems impossible to satisfy even the urban renewal and arts aspects of the plan within that funding framework.

But business interest and support is critical, as is a clear definition of the role of Government and agencies such as the IDA and Enterprise Ireland.

However, no extensive dialogue with these subjects is indicated in the discussion document, and business has yet to be properly engaged. In the meantime, critical momentum has been lost and continues to ebb. The Digital Hub needs enormous vision and drive, which has not yet emerged.

On the other hand, the discussion document indicates a re-engagement of sorts and one cannot doubt the strong and sincere interest of the DMDL parties and Mr Teahon to making the hub work. In addition, the Department of Public Enterprise has already dedicated several people to the hub project and in them, DMDL will have gained committed and badly-needed allies.

From the feedback I hear, there is growing disillusionment across the technology sector that this project will be sacrificed to continuing histrionics over the big- budget, and unpopular Stadium Ireland project. And most dismaying - and irrelevant - is one of the Government's arguments that a downturn in the tech sector necessitates a cutback in the project's scope.

Knowledge-driven technology jobs, not old-world manufacturing or heavily-subsidised farming, have already built much of the State's current prosperity and are, without any doubt, the future. Now is exactly the time we should be carving out a defining, international profile in areas of technology that suit Irish strengths, and the broad, creative realm of digital media is ideal.

Finally, several Irish academics managed to take their ongoing bitterness at the funding of Media Lab Europe into the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Of course, this discussion is relevant and important, particularly as it clearly continues to fester for some people. But for months it has been carried on at a most whiney and pathetic level, rather than being addressed productively. Of course, anyone who has worked in ego-rich but cash-deficient academia - and that includes yours truly, once a lecturer at California State University - knows that the battles are so bitter because the stakes are so low.

Nevertheless, making the Republic look embarrassingly xenophobic and parochial in the world's most widely-read business newspaper certainly did no one any favours. Frankly, I'm astonished that anyone who truly cares about developing international research links and advancing the profile of Irish research is still looking for a soapbox, much less seizing one that could prove so damaging to Irish business and research in general while bringing no possible benefit to the complainers. Why not put those same energies into something productive, such as lobbying for additional research funding, establishing connections with compatible research groups abroad, or even - dare I suggest - coming up with an innovative project for the Digital Hub that will encourage further investment, rather than scare it away?

klillington@irish-times.ie