"Digitalization has made it possible to create, record, manipulate,
combine, store, retrieve and transmit information and information-based
products in ways which magnetic tape, celluloid and paper did not
permit. Digitalization thus allows music, cinema and the written word
to be recorded and transformed through similar processes and without
distinct material supports. Previously dissimilar industries, such as
publishing and sound recording, now both produce CD-ROM rather than
simply books and records" (excerpt from the Proceedings of the
Symposium on Multimedia Convergence, International Labor Organization,
January 1997). In book publishing, digitization speeded up the
editorial process, which used to be sequential, by allowing the copy
editor, the image editor and the layout staff to work at the same time
on the same book. In mainstream media, journalists and editors could
now type in their articles online, and these articles went directly
from text to layout, without being keyed in anymore by the production
staff.