The current buzz surrounding science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines and their economic importance is certainly justified. Unfortunately, when educators push to improve a specific discipline, it often has negative effects on everything else. While the STEM disciplines are important, focus on them is taking away from other areas, including multimedia technologies. Currently multimedia and the corresponding technology literacy programs are being downgraded as expensive fluff, and are being replaced by more in vogue disciplines with easily standardized and tested content. However, without the skills learned in multimedia disciplines, even the world's greatest achievement go unpublished and research proceeds at a virtual snail's pace. In this article, the author argues that multimedia communications are critical for success in a digital world. (Contains 1 figure.)