OUGD501 - Essay Quotes

Essay Key Quotes      

•  “Just as the Industrial Revolution was driven by combining the steam engine with ingenious machinery, the Digital Revolution has been driven by two great innovations: the personal computer and the Internet.” (Walter Isaacson, 2014)
• “A society that used to communicate via the postal service, expecting someone to respond to a letter in the number of days, now expect a response to an email is a matter of seconds.” (Jeff Gomez, 2008)
• “A blank piece of paper and a computer screen when it is off have something in common: both are empty, devoid on content, ripe with possibility. A myriad of things could cover each; words, number, pictures, philosophy, comedy, tragedy. The possibilities are endless. But while you can only fit so much into one piece of paper (only so many words and so many numbers no matter how small you write), a computer screen can be an inexhaustible source of endless information. A computer screen is a gateway forever replenishing itself by either scrolling or replacing old information with new.” (Jeff Gomez, 2008)
• “Books as physical objects matter to me, because they evoke the past. A Métro ticket falls out of a book I bought 40 years ago, and I am transported back to the Rue Saint-Jacques on Sept. 12, 1972, where I am waiting for someone named Annie LeCombe. A telephone message from a friend who died too young falls out of a book, and I find myself back in the Chateau Marmont on a balmy September day in 1995. A note I scribbled to myself in "Homage to Catalonia" in 1973 when I was in Granada reminds me to learn Spanish, which I have not yet done, and to go back to Granada.” (Joe Queenan, 2012)
• “Publishers are leaning heavily on the idea that these are “premium” magazines, with deep reporting and full-page photos. Music reviews site Pitchfork even hopes that printing its quarterly magazine’s long-form features and illustrations on high-quality paper stock will encourage readers to collect them just as they collect vinyl records. But rather than eye the big general-interest numbers of Time and Rolling Stone, digital publishers are creating their magazines with lower circulations and content aimed at more niche audiences.” (Ricardo Bilton, 2014)
•  “You might describe them as coffee-table books, except they're not aspirational signs of taste. They're beautiful objects, whose arrangement of content, photography and paper stocks convey a different view of the world. The design and textures are an invitation to be touched, flicked, handled. Most of all, in keeping with our age of Instagram, Pinterest and social network photo sharing, the content is visually driven.” (John O’Reilly, 2014)
• “People who possess the physical copy of a book, not merely an electronic version, believe that the objects themselves are sacred. Some people may find this attitude baffling, arguing that books are merely objects that take up space. This is true but so is Prague and your kids and they Sistine Chapel.” (Joe Queenan, 2012)
• “If one magazine dies, it’s not the end of the industry, do I need to tell you how many TV shows have come and gone over the years? Yet nobody said that television was dead.” (Samir Husni, 2014)  
• “The physical artefacts are beginning to feel more precious, more like gifts. And I can see publishing going the same way. Maybe what we’ll lose to digital publishing is the cheaply produced mass market printing on poor quality paper. And what we gain is a new appreciation of well-designed, higher quality hardbacks.” (Rob Hart, 2013)
• “It's simply a matter of defining the different role and purpose of print and online, print does certain things very well. There's a sense of reward – almost luxury – of devoting time to the printed page that you can't put a price on. But at the same time, there's an immediacy and 'shareability' to the online world that's just as valuable in its own unique way.” (Sarah Cremer, 2012)