Science & Tech Quote by David Milne

A painter wouldn’t normally talk like this, which is exactly why the line lands as an accidental time capsule: it’s the voice of modernity, all portfolio logic and “targeting,” as if creativity itself has been reorganized into a roadmap. The specific intent is managerial and persuasive. Milne frames a sequence of choices - mixed-signal needs, image first, audio second - to justify a strategy that sounds inevitable rather than debatable. Even the clunky phrasing (“started our product portfolio”) performs a kind of authority: this isn’t inspiration, it’s planning.

The subtext is an argument about where culture is heading and who gets to shape it. “Image processing devices” and “audio applications” are not just technical categories; they’re the two channels through which consumer life becomes mediated, recorded, reproduced, sold back. By placing image before audio, the quote quietly predicts the visual turn that would define mass culture: spectacle, screens, the primacy of seeing over listening. “Mixed signal requirements” hints at the deeper pivot - analog reality being translated into digital form. That translation is the real product.

Contextually, the sentence belongs less to studio talk than to the industrial optimism surrounding consumer electronics: the belief that new tools don’t merely serve markets, they create them. The rhetoric of “growing use” makes adoption feel natural, almost biological, sidestepping any anxiety about what gets lost when art, sound, and sight become engineering problems. It’s not an artist defending imagination; it’s a strategist normalizing a future where creativity is a feature set.