Digital Age

Suddenly, they're popping up everywhere — those square, futuristic-looking matrixes that appear to be a cross between abstract art and Rorschach tests. You'll find them in the corner of newspaper and magazine ads, in department store aisles, on product displays, price tags and For Sale signs in front of homes. Giant-sized versions have shown up on billboards. Called quick response codes, or simply QRs, they're the barcodes for the digital age — but ones that convey far more information, and which can be scanned by consumers with smartphones and tablet computers to open a Web page, play a video or even place a call.

Once considered one of the most powerful and sought-after positions in Hollywood, running Walt Disney Studios - the 89-year-old Burbank institution behind "Snow White," "Mary Poppins" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" - now seems about as desirable as playing Goofy on a hot day at Disneyland. But since Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger fired his studio head Rich Ross last week, the buzz in Hollywood has been less about who's angling for the studio chairman job and more about who would want it. The reason: Iger's strategy of turning Disney into a collection of brands means that most of the films it releases are not overseen or greenlighted by the movie studio chief, as they are at rival companies.

What are you doing on your summer vacation? Relaxing at the beach? Enjoying friends and family? Or are you checking your smartphone every five minutes? It's the essential predicament of the Digital Age. Even on vacation. It's tempting to blame our tools, the BlackBerrys and the iPhones that keep us so connected and busy. But the real problem isn't the technologies; it's us. We've convinced ourselves that the more connected we are, the better. We never give ourselves a break.

Reading habits may be fundamentally changing, but a new survey shows that the printed word remains fundamental. Although many Californians who own Kindles, Nooks and other e-readers love their gadgets, they still prefer books the old-fashioned way - on paper - according to a poll by USC Dornsife and the Los Angeles Times. Even with sales of e-readers surging, only 10% of respondents who have one said they had abandoned traditional books. More than half said most or all of the books they read are in printed form.

Are you an ultra-modern new parent who wants to raise kids the tried-and-tested midcentury way? "Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care," the bestselling child-rearing bible, will be available as an ebook starting next week, Skyhorse Publishing has announced. Dr. Spock's manual has sold more than 50 million copies and gone through nine editions since its initial publication in 1946; now parents can read it on Kindle, Nook or iPad. Three other Dr. Spock books have already made the ebook leap: "Dr. Spock's The School Years," "Dr. Spock's The First Two Years" and "Dr. Spock's Pregnancy Guide.

Two months after Eastman Kodak Co.declared bankruptcy, another household name is succumbing to the relentless march of technology. Encyclopaedia Britannica announced Tuesday that it is discontinuing its best-known product, the 32-volume collection of reference material on everything from aardvarks to zygotes. The company is shifting its focus to the Internet, where it offers a virtual version of its books and a slate of fee-based educational services. The company's ability to sell pricey bound volumes for 244 years is a testament not just to the power of its brand, but also to the demand for a convenient, reliable source of information.

Like many great satires, Gary Shteyngart's "Super Sad True Love Story" imagines a dystopian future eerily reminiscent of our present world, one in which invasive social networking threatens his characters' sanity and their souls. To research the book, the reserved novelist had to break down and buy an iPhone. The change in his life, according to Shteyngart, has been nerve-wracking. "It's hard to focus. It's hard to have a conversation without checking the iPhone. It's hard to go to a shrink and spend a few minutes on the couch and not need to see what's happening.

Television writer-producer Jill Soloway turned off her electronic devices for 24 hours last Saturday and spent the morning playing with her 2-year-old son in her yard in Silver Lake. "It was excruciating and kind of wonderful. I struggled with a feeling of anxiety that there was something in my inbox I needed to tend to," she said. "Then came a moment when it felt like a holiday. Holiday means holy day. What a huge gift. " Soloway, executive producer of the Showtime series "United States of Tara," and a self-described smartphone junkie, was taking part in the "National Day of Unplugging," organized by Reboot, a group of urban media professionals who try to reconnect with Jewish tradition in a way that is meaningful to their hectic lives.

Newsstand owner Robert Kelly is well aware that he's not in the most profitable of businesses these days. But, at 58, he says it's too late to get out of the print business. Plus, he enjoys having a front-row seat to the comings and goings in Los Feliz. Kelly has become a fixture at the corner of Vermont and Melbourne avenues, where he has operated his newsstand for 11 years, greeting neighbors and regulars by name and instinctively reaching for their favorite magazine or newspaper when they approach.

Internet sites geared to children and families that want to build a loyal base need to provide engaging content in a safe environment. And if they can offer the right resources to help parents make informed decisions, all the better. That said, the following two sites are good additions to your browser's bookmarks: MaMaMedia is a venerable kids' favorite, and FamilyWonder helps parents keep up with the latest in children's media. MaMaMedia Launched in 1997, MaMaMedia at http://www.mamamedia.

In the past 100 years, technology has drastically changed most things in our lives. But one crucially important part of our political system has remained mired in the last century: the way we choose our president. America's current nominating system dates to 1910, when the first presidential primary was held in Oregon. At the time, this was a radical step, aimed at taking the nominating process away from political bosses. Now, a century later, we're overdue for another radical step.

Two months after Eastman Kodak Co.declared bankruptcy, another household name is succumbing to the relentless march of technology. Encyclopaedia Britannica announced Tuesday that it is discontinuing its best-known product, the 32-volume collection of reference material on everything from aardvarks to zygotes. The company is shifting its focus to the Internet, where it offers a virtual version of its books and a slate of fee-based educational services. The company's ability to sell pricey bound volumes for 244 years is a testament not just to the power of its brand, but also to the demand for a convenient, reliable source of information.

Are you an ultra-modern new parent who wants to raise kids the tried-and-tested midcentury way? "Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care," the bestselling child-rearing bible, will be available as an ebook starting next week, Skyhorse Publishing has announced. Dr. Spock's manual has sold more than 50 million copies and gone through nine editions since its initial publication in 1946; now parents can read it on Kindle, Nook or iPad. Three other Dr. Spock books have already made the ebook leap: "Dr. Spock's The School Years," "Dr. Spock's The First Two Years" and "Dr. Spock's Pregnancy Guide.

There'll be a pair of Pasadena institutions along Colorado Boulevard for New Year's -- the Rose Parade, and a company marking 100 years in business. Anderson Business Technology, nee Anderson Typewriter Co., has bucked two trends: It's been a one-family operation all along, and it's managed to leap from the age of slammed return levers and carbon paper to ctrl.alt.delete. Don Anderson and his son, David, are chairman and president, the second and third generations in the firm. Change has been crucial to their century of success, and yet a romantic roll call of anachronistic mechanical brands -- Royal, Underwood, Smith Corona, Olivetti, Sholes and Glidden, Hermes -- still connects the Andersons to the "typosphere," where poet Charles Bukowski's manual Olympia stars on a mouse pad, and composer Leroy Anderson's whimsical "The Typewriter" stars on YouTube.

Robert Levine, 41, a former executive editor of Billboard, sounds the alarm on Internet piracy and technology companies' economic war on the music, movies, television, book publishing and newspaper industries in "Free Ride: How Digital Parasites Are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back" (Doubleday). What made you decide this book needed to be written? The decision was gradual. When Napster came out I thought it was the greatest thing ever, like a lot of people did. I thought the Internet would give artists a way to reach fans directly and do business with them, and labels would have to compete and offer better deals.

This season "Terra Nova" has exhumed the Cretaceous period, but can it also help resurrect another block of time that would seem equally challenging to revive — the family viewing hour? The heavily promoted prime-time show, dubbed internally at Fox as "Little House on the Prairie with Dinosaurs," is an eco-action-adventure series built around a family of five that travels back 85 million years to give humans a second chance at caring for Earth. The ratings have been solid for the show, which counts Steven Spielberg and former News Corp.

We are going digital. We are also going to Ireland, but in terms of lifestyle shifts and general surrender, going digital is bigger. For years now, our friends have been sending us photos over the Internet, with mixed results (if we had to do anything more than click on it, we couldn't open it) or giving us discs full of images from trips and birthday parties and Christmas bakeoffs.

Death from the sky Re "Targeted for death," Editorial, Oct. 2 The editorial was right on target as far as the civil liberties questions are concerned. There does indeed need to be some judicial finding that certain individuals (citizens or not) are in fact a mortal threat to the United States and therefore can be targeted for death. But The Times did not go into the question of national sovereignty. What is the constitutional authority for one of our drones to invade the airspace of a neutral country (Pakistan or Yemen)

Newsstand owner Robert Kelly is well aware that he's not in the most profitable of businesses these days. But, at 58, he says it's too late to get out of the print business. Plus, he enjoys having a front-row seat to the comings and goings in Los Feliz. Kelly has become a fixture at the corner of Vermont and Melbourne avenues, where he has operated his newsstand for 11 years, greeting neighbors and regulars by name and instinctively reaching for their favorite magazine or newspaper when they approach.