Link: BBC NEWS | Technology | Cultural past of the digital age.
Cultural past of the digital age
" Do books and film have a place in the modern world, asks Bill Thompson
"Last weekend I had the enormous privilege of seeing the 70mm print of Stanley Kubrick's film of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Arts Picturehouse in Cambridge.
"Watching it on a small screen diminishes its artistry and the film can sometimes seen boring and even dull, but on the big screen with proper sound and an audience it remains a challenging, stimulating experience.
"The 70mm print, with each frame twice as wide as the normal 35mm film usually projected in cinemas, gives a visual clarity that really does have to be seen to be believed, and remains superior to even the highest-resolution digital displays.
So this was probably our last chance to see the film in the format its director intended, and I'll admit to a feeling of nostalgia about it.... (...)
"Although we may want books, we may not be able to afford them as the digital world impacts on traditional publishing.
"Books are published by companies that rely on the profits from some bestsellers to support the less popular, perhaps using the money from sales to schools and libraries to sustain a fiction list, or money from directories to keep things afloat, and this ecosystem is falling apart....
