There will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.
Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft, 5 June 2008
"The time is not far off when you will be answering your television, watching your computer, and programming your phone."
Raymond Smith, Chairman/CEO, Bell Atlantic, 1995
"Consumers will one day be able to eliminate advertising completely if desired. The era of mass marketing is ending."
"I think if I was Procter & Gamble, I'd be buying billboard space. A lot of it."
Professor Nicholas Negroponte, Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1994
"We can’t be sure that ad-supported TV programming will have a future in the world being created - a world of video-on-demand, pay-per-view, and subscription television."
Edwin Artzt, Chairman and CEO, Procter & Gamble Co., 1994
"By 2005, advanced database technology and increased bandwidth will enable each citizen to have a personal relationship with members of government. This will be achieved by face-to-face interaction via video-conferencing; personalized documents on line; and virtual town hall meetings in which constituents may participate from the comfort of their own living rooms. By using the Internet, as well as strategically placed information kiosks, business people and consumers will receive service information; inquire about personal liabilities; make consumer complaints, and pay taxes, fees and fines. I am proud that my administration has the opportunity to lay the groundwork for such an outcome."
Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mayor, City of New York, April 1997
"When the printing press was invented, people said: ‘What’s the use of printing when only a few people can read’. People in virtually all societies will, by the first decade of the 21st century, be able to communicate through these broadband digital networks and information highways."
Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction author, July 1997
"If we know what the future is, we aren’t looking far enough ahead."
Tim Berner-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web, July 1997
"At some point a new generation of hundreds of low-altitude satellites is likely to make fully interactive broadband Internet access a reality around the globe. But that day is at least several years away."
Bill Gates, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft, November 1996
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it"
Dr Alan Kay, founder of Xerox PARC
"Anything, anywhere, anytime"
Gerald Levin, Chief Executive, Time Warner, 1995
"I don't know what the hell I'm talking about really. We'll know the truth when we get there"
Andy Grove, Chief Executive, Intel, 1995
"Understanding the new media is the single largest business challenge that marketers have faced since the creation of TV"
James Cantalupo, CEO, McDonald's International, 1995
"Just as the railways were the driving force behind the prosperity of Britain in the 19th century, telecommunications will be the key to prosperity in the 21st."
Andrew Neil, October 1996
"I don't think anybody will give a shit"
Andy Grove, Chief Executive, Intel, 1995
"People do not appreciate how dramatic this is. It is one of the biggest breakthroughs this century."
Neil Blackley, Media Analyst, Goldman Sachs, 1995
"The world is in the throes of an information revolution which, in its way, is bringing about changes to our industry and the whole of society as momentous as those of the industrial revolution 150 years ago"
Rupert Murdoch, CEO, News Corporation, 1995
"I feel a bit like Christopher Columbus. He didn't know where the Spice Islands were and when he finally reached land he didn't know whether he had found them or not."
Neeta Patel, Head of Consumer Futures, Legal & General, UK, April 1998
"There is always a lot of Utopianism around any new piece of technology. I think when television was invented people talked a lot about how it would promote universal peace, but what do we have, a lot of sitcoms and game shows."
Marc Andreessen, Chief Technology Officer, Netscape, USA, June 1998
"Digital TV has destroyed the 'convergence theory'. For year's now, the word convergence has gone side-by-side with digital, a convenient way of explaining how TVs and PCs will get married and live happily ever after. Well, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there's been a divorce. It's increasingly clear that people's use of the TV and the PC are hugely different experiences. TV will continue to be the dominant medium for lean-back leisure rather than lean-forward interaction."
Elisabeth Murdoch, General Manager, Sky Television, UK, August 1998
"Every now and then, a technology [the Internet] comes along that is so profound, so powerful, so universal, that its impact will change everything. It will transform every institution in the world. It will create winners and losers, will change the way we do business, the way we teach our children, communicate and interact as individuals."
Lou Gerstner, Chairman, IBM, 1996
"What's my return on investment in e-commerce? Are you crazy? This is Columbus in the New World. What was his ROI?"
Andy Grove, Chairman, Intel, US, August 1997
"Our culture may be degraded by the instant availability in new media of the raucous, the vulgar and the sensationalist."
John Birt, Director-general, BBC, June 1999
"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
Charles Darwin
"The internet revolution is the biggest thing that has happened to this planet for centuries. Literacy rates should go through the roof."
James Strachan, Managing Director, Encyclopaedia Britannica, UK, August 1999
"The moment of truth arrives when reality can no longer sustain investor's exaggerated expectations. This is followed by a twilight period when people continue to play the game, although they no longer believe in it. Eventually, a crossover point is reached when the trend turns down and the bias is reversed. This leads to a catastrophic acceleration in the opposite direction, commonly known as the crash."
George Soros, in his book 'The Crisis of Global Capitalism', December 1998
"The new economy is not based on financial considerations but on temporal ones. Consumers will be looking for a return on time rather than investment and the key satisfaction rating will be 'time well spent' rather than value for money."
Thornton May, Corporate Futurist, Cambridge Technology Partners, USA, January 2000
"The web is a very socialistic, almost communistic force. It attacks traditional ways of doing things and elites, and this is very uncomfortable for traditional businesses to deal with."
Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP, UK, April 2000
"Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision is merely passing time. But vision with action can change the world."
Joel Barker, 1992
"It [the Internet] is, beyond question, the fastest growth curve of a fundamental change in society. And almost everybody will have to get used to it."
Bill Gates, April 2000
"More than 70% of current internet-related companies will go out of business within two years."
Michael Whitaker, CEO, NewMedia Spark, UK, May 2000
"People tend to over-estimate the next two years and under-estimate the next ten years"
Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon, US, July 2000
"Even the canniest executive wizards can abandon caution and common sense when faced with the word Internet. They surrender all thought of earnings, dividends, costs or profits. They show the classic symptom of business panic. They head for the herd even when they know the herd is heading for the cliff."
Simon Jenkins, The Times, UK, September 2000
"Supermarkets have replaced TV as the delivery channel for a mass audience. If I want to get my message across to 70% of British households it is obviously going to be more cost-effective to run display ends in major retailers than to purchase overpriced breaks in a soap."
Andrew Harrison, Marketing Director, Nestle Rowntree, UK, September 2002
