Douglas Adams: Views on Technology and the Media

Before he died, Douglas Adams worked on a radio series which discusses how media industries (publishing, music, broadcasting, etc.) will be affected by new (specifically computer) technology.

What the radio series reveals is that Adams believed in a convergence of media, but a convergence in which previous media are absorbed by the new media.

In response to music, publishing, broadcast reps asking how the computer would affect them, Douglas said:

"It would be as if a bunch of rivers [the separate media industries], the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Congo were asking how the Atlantic would affect them. The answer being that there won't be rivers anymore, merely currents in the [digital] ocean."