Published in: Shelf Awareness

". . . .At CrunchGear, Devin Coldewey has some thoughts on such futurist predictions: "The death of printed books. . .is, of course, merely an ongoing process--a given. What is in the air is the timing. Negroponte says not ten years, but five. Either he has more faith than I do in consumers' plasticity, or he's talking about something completely different." He points out some factors that put Negroponte's time frame in doubt. Citing the most recent "Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading" report, Coldewey believes that while consumers are adopting e-reading, the upfront costs are still an obstacle. "And it's difficult to overestimate the inertia of existing technologies--especially ones that have been around for a good three millennia. . . ."

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