In the last century I read and wrote a lot about multimedia and the Internet.

From that period I've kept some quotable quotes by others, as well as my accompanying photo of relics from Egypt. The quotes are sourced from three magazines - Australian Personal Computer, Internet World and Wired.

Like the relics, the quotes are inspirational or capture truths. My heading for each quote is pure whimsy, or is it? Hmm... 

Normann and Ramirez on Web 2.0

• "According to the Harvard Business Review's Richard Normann and Rafael Ramirez, 'in a world where value occurs not in chains but in complex constellations, the goal of business is not so much to make or do something of value for customers as it is to mobilise customers to make value for themselves.  That is why ATMs are so popular despite the critics. And that is why IKEA has become the world's largest furniture retailer.' "  
  

Source: Australian Personal Computer, December 1993 p. 68.

Strangelove on Social Networking 

• "More than anything else, isolated and disempowered consumers are flocking to the Internet because it provides the essential elements missing from broadcast culture: information, feedback, content, and community. ... The emerging paradigm of mass participation in uncensored, bidirectional mass hypermedia (the Net) differs from regional broadcasting "monomedia" by virtue of its uncensored and interactive quality." 

Source: Michael Strangelove, author of the book How to Advertise on the Internet and publisher of The Internet Business Journal writing in the magazine, Internet World, May 1995 p. 42 and 44.

Hearst on Google 

• Will Hearst, now a partner of [venture capital firm] Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers of San Francisco is said to have: "...viewed newspapers as "creating contexts" that is, adding value by organizing information and making it more understandable and accessible by combining it with photographs, headlines, captions, maps, and charts... Hearst also saw an important value for newspapers in "making a market" - bringing advertisers and consumers together. The next step was to figure out how to translate those values to a world where newsprint and online data coexisted. Part of Hearst's vision for the future of newspapers was strictly digital: searchable databases, online news and advertising, an ability to amass information about a large base of customers. Online access could overcome the newsprint examiner's disadvantage of publishing in the afternoons.  "On the Internet, there's no moring or afternoon, there's just interesting or boring."

Source:  Wired magazine, June 1995, p. 120.