Digital Transition Quotes

Our economy, for a long while, has been transitioning from one reliant on industrial strength to one based on digital information. The next step in this transition is a digital economy shaped by connectivity.

It was an interesting question as to whether the BBC had a future in the digital world, and what form of market failure could justify the licence fee system.

When albums gave way to CDs, people re-discovered their collection through their CDs.

When digital recording came in about '84, everything started to follow into digital. Now, you've got the best recording media in the world, but it's not very pleasing to the ear.

I don't know what will happen to the physical book and what it will mean for authors. I worry whether it will mean people can still make their careers this way. Will whatever comes next allow people to be able to own their ideas and be able to take time to develop them?

To rush to throw away your magazine business and move it on the iPad is just sheer insanity and insecurity and fear.

I grew up on network sitcoms. If those are gone when I'm 65 years old, I would never forgive myself for not stepping up to that plate, as often as possible. I'm already bummed out that DVDs are dying off because, in my 20s, those were a huge thing.

I think we are waiting for an e-book that even non-techies can be comfortable with. From my point of view, the biggest change is that I don't have to spend most of the day printing out and packaging a manuscript. I think I almost miss that.

On the professional side, I've helped move cinema from a chemical-based medium to a digital-based medium. That'll be one of the landmarks. And I've left these stories, these little tales that have been imprinted on the media, which will or will not be of interest to people in the future. I've done the best I can.

I paint digitally now. A pity, in some ways, as the biggest price one pays is that you no longer have a finished piece of physical art to hang on a wall. I miss that terribly.

It is a significant acknowledgment that the way people are watching television is changing and the model is quickly changing.

It is way less certain to be a wonderful business in the future. The threat is alternative mediums of information. Every newspaper is scrambling to parlay their existing advantage into dominance on the Internet. But it is way less sure [that this will occur] than the certainty 20 years ago that the basic business would grow steadily, so there's more downside risk. The perfectly fabulous economics of this business could become grievously impaired.

Mixtapes were the soundtrack, back in my day, of peoples' lives.

I'm sad to see celluloid go, there's no doubt. But, you know, nitrate went, by the way, in 1971. If you ever saw a nitrate print of a silent film and then saw an acetate print, you'd see a big difference, but nobody remembers anymore. The acetate print is what we have. Maybe. Now it's digital.

With iPad publishing, you can try new things, experiment, and even launch new magazines without the massive risk normally associated with print publishing. The future is digital, so there will be a digital version of everything we do going forward. There has to be. The cheese has been moved.

I think crossing into the digital age is the big move for the industry. I think it will be the biggest thing that's happened while I've been making movies. I equate it to the invention of color or sound, and I don't see any other major technical process coming along and changing that.

I do worry that the days of the physical paper are seriously numbered.

I got my first laptop, what I learned to do everything on, when I was 17 or 18, and I had no idea what I was doing. I'd only ever produced on an 8-track before. When I was about 13 and writing songs, I would write on that. It would literally be eight tracks, and that's all I had.

I understand the nostalgia of having paper to feel and smell when you read it, but I would rather have fond memories of newspapers that have become obsolete than fond memories of beautiful forests that have become obsolete.

I make a good living selling hardback books through paper publishers, and I have many friends in the industry who will suffer as it changes, so on a personal level, the transition to digital isn't something I welcome wholeheartedly.

Yelp has been in this business since it really became something worth thinking about in 2004, when the transition started happening from the world of the Yellow Pages to the world of searching online for local information.

Xerox did OK in moving to digital in the commercial space. They didn't do well in the consumer market, but they're not a consumer brand. They don't even know how to spell consumer.

I don't think the BBC supporting digital switchover is top slicing. Top slicing is putting the license fee up for grabs for other broadcasters to bid for.

I think someone like Jack Kirby, for instance, would suffer greatly in the transition from print to digital were he still around.

People book me because of the songs I write, not because of the sets that I play, per se... I'm sure I'm going to be moving to a laptop really soon, but I was one of the last guys to let the vinyl go. I was crying. In my room, I still have thousands of records. I still pull them out and play them all the time.