It was to harbor drawers brimming with reference books, microfilm and bibliographic CARDS. He also imagined radio, television and camera equipment at arm's length on the desk.
The shift to digital technologies from start to finish is evident in the image quality (digital sometimes looks less visually dense than film) and the ubiquity of hand-held (lightweight) cameras.
In a recent blog post, IBM CTO Mark Dean opined that personal computers are “going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs.”