Whenever new technology comes along, a couple of things can happen. The new technology might look good on paper, and may honestly be a good thing, but people just don’t buy adopt (think betamax). The other thing that can happen is the new thing may not seem to appeal to folks—people may even shun the new technology–and yet slowly and surely (sometimes not so slowly) everybody suddenly adopts it (think Twitter).
E-books might be the latter. This straw poll seems to indicate that a lot of people don’t think much of e-books. And yet the sale of e-book readers are on the rise. The sale of E-books themselves are on the rise. More and more people are warming up to the idea.
Technology moves quickly. Think of how long it took for the automobile, radio or television to be widely adopted. Now think of how long it took for the people to adopt the iPod, Facebook and Twitter.
I think in three years we’ll all be surprised at how deep e-books have become entrenched in our lives.
