UNESCO: The e-Book revolution is yet to happen

[Colin Dunstan]

Unesco recently offered a workshop in Bangalore, India depicting the potential of e-Books. Participants from Asia and Europe identified the issues and complexities involved in e-book projects delineating the role of e-Books in education, research and libraries from the perspective of the publishers, distributors and users.

While I believe that the acceptance for e-books has at least somewhat improved, Shalini Urs, who leads a UNESCO e-Book Project Strategy Group, has a more gloomy interpretation of the current market:

"The e-Book industry and market place is a nebulous one with each of the players continuing to test waters and gingerly transiting into the arena. While most of the stakeholders believe in the potential of the e-Books, none is ready to take the plunge – not yet! The e-Book revolution though foretold in the year 2000 is yet to happen."

You can read the full press release here.

[Brian]

I think this is yet more evidence that after quickly reaching the peak of inflated expectations (as mentioned in the quote, around the year 2000), eBooks have reached the bottom of the "trough of disillusionment" in Gartner's Hype Cycle and are starting to climb into the "slope of enlightenment. Companies that develop and embrace emerging technologies must prepare for the roller coaster ride of the hype cycle. The ones that don't prepare to weather the lows with a comprehensive business model will find themselves out of business or scrambling to embrace other proven technologies in order to survive.

Now that ebooks appear to be emerging from this low point, advocating ebooks and educating the masses will only help to accelerate their widespread adoption and acceptance.

Brian

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by Brian

I think this is yet more evidence that after quickly reaching the peak of inflated expectations (as mentioned in the quote, around the year 2000), eBooks have reached the bottom of the "trough of disillusionment" in Gartner's Hype Cycle and are starting to climb into the "slope of enlightenment. Companies that develop and embrace emerging technologies must prepare for the roller coaster ride of the hype cycle. The ones that don't prepare to weather the lows with a comprehensive business model will find themselves out of business or scrambling to embrace other proven technologies in order to survive.

Now that ebooks appear to be emerging from this low point, advocating ebooks and educating the masses will only help to accelerate their widespread adoption and acceptance.

Brian

I like reading old threads on forums just to see who predicted what I have to say he called it Amazon got on the ebook train at the perfect time where as the rest were late to the party or to early and had given up.

[sabredog]

[Giggleton]

Yes, the ebook revolution is yet to happen. I think its going to have something to do with the abolishment of copyright.

[wizwor]

How about the irrelavance of copyright? I just attended a trade show where creation and sharing of softwares, guides, templates, and best practices is the primary objective. CK12.org is producing free, common core aligned and NSES aligned digital textbooks. MIT is creating opencourseware. Just about anything we used to find on a newsstand, magazine rack, or library shelf is available for free on the internet. With the cost of publishing and promotion approaching $0, writing for reasons other than profit has taken off. It's natural for people to share ideas. I think there will be a GNU for ideas. There will still be copyright and license, but people will gravitate towards free, inexpensive, and unregulated alternatives.

[WillAdams]

The problem w/ free / inexpensive and unregulated is that one then has to sift through a _lot_ of chaff. The other problem is one winds up w/ a dictatorship of the majority, w/ only the populist view being heard after the application of edits (examine any controversial article on Wikipedia for an example of this).

One the bright side, one can usually get submitted corrections acted on, but I am getting really tired of trying to read stuff for enjoyment or edification and having to instead work as an unpaid editor. An occasional typo to report is fine and understandable, we're all human and mistakes happen, but in things which I've been reading on other sites there's apparently little effort to edit or even review before uploading or hitting ``post'' (which makes the high quality ebooks and posts here a pleasure).