"People who use their interactive screens to book a salmon-fishing holiday in Scotland might switch on a baseball game the next day to find themselves watching advertisements for outdoor clothing or fly-fishing equipment in the commercial break. Over time interactive television would build up such accurate profiles of individuals from their viewing and buying habits that every advertisement would be individually tailored to meet their wants and needs. One commercial might suggest you book a table at Lutece's for your wedding anniversary tomorrow; another could recommend a Hermes tie to match that shirt you bought last week; a third might remind you that you usually change your car around this time and suggest you look at the new Lexus."
Prof. Nicholas Negroponte, Media Lab, MIT, May 1994
"The technology and applications for large-scale use will trail some years behind the attention-getting announcements and corporate mergers."
Price Waterhouse, January 1995
"The worry that multimedia and on-line services will cannibalize TV is the old argument that film would kill radio, then TV would kill film, then home video would kill network TV and so on. None of this has happened."
Pat Mitchell, Exec. VP, TBS Productions, 1995
"A TS Eliot Waste Land of home-bound, high-tech zombies"
Michael Eisner, Chief Executive, Disney Corporation, 1994
"Television will always be important but smart companies are finding more and more innovative ways of reaching their audience."
Ted Smyth, VP, Heinz, May 1994
"Italy will probably be first into the European market"
Edgar Brown, Chief Executive, Bell Atlantic International, May 1994
"We don’t really know what the market wants"
Dr. Alan Rudge, Deputy Managing Director, BT, January 1995.
"Some people in our business find the complexity of the new scenario disconcerting. I personally see it as the most exciting development since I've been in the business. I just wish I were starting all over again."
Sir Michael Perry, Chairman, Unilever plc, January 1996
"The consumer doesn’t care if optic fibre, copper or a highly trained duck brings them broadband"
BT Spokesman, May 1997
"There isn't a digitally illiterate 10-year-old in the US. Even if they only play Sega or Gameboy, they are used to the technology."
Professor Nicholas Negroponte, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (from speech at the Edinburgh Television Festival), August 1997
