Douglas Dixon attended Brown University from 1973 to 1977, earning both a B.S. and an M.S. in Computer Science. He studied under Andries van Dam and Robert Sedgewick, and his work focused on computer graphics and the analysis of algorithms. Dixon began his career at RCA’s David Sarnoff Research Center (DSRC) in Princeton, New Jersey in 1978, where he spent ten years developing interactive video and computer graphics for consumer electronics. In 1988, Dixon moved to the Intel Corporation, also in Princeton, where he worked on Digital Video Interactive (DVI) technology.

In 1993, Dixon returned to DSRC and led teams that developed a virtual reality gaming system, an iris identification prototype, a software program to create panoramic images from multiple still images, a system to convert automated tape to DVD, and image quality analysis technology.

During his tenure at Sarnoff, Dixon was issued three U.S. patents and received four Sarnoff Achievement Awards. Since leaving in 2003, Dixon has freelanced as a writer, lecturer, and consultant. He also maintains (as of 2014) a website and blog, http://www.manifest-tech.com/index.html, where he helps consumers make sense of digital media technology.