The digitizing of the world continues.
It's a process by which all things we used to be very familiar with (check my blog on Sounds) has now changed. In that "Sounds" blog entry, I said that one of the sounds I miss is the sound of a needle dropping onto a record. I will have to say, while shopping on Black Friday, I did see a stereo combo which included a turntable! I was stunned.
Digitizing is the representation of a object, image, sound, document or an analog signal by a discrete set of it's points or samples. Simple capturing an analog feed in it's digital form.
You know what is amazing? Nearly all recorded music is now digitized. Yes, all the music purists who always preached about The Beatles original analog stereo sound, which has now been lost through digitizing, are rolling over.
Even more amazing, only 12% of movies (500,000 listed at IMDB) are now digital. Movies are slowly moving (very slowly) that way. Even when you visit the multi-aisle of your favorite DVD provider, realize that is less than 12% of all movies, since no one carries all that are available and some are already out of print.
If you really want to get sound purists going, talk about the limitations of MP3.
What does this all mean? We really don't know, but we do know that a convergence for mass media is coming. A lesser need for traditional channels of communication. Digitization means crunch time.