Two articles caught my attention this week. The first was an article from the Computer World blog taken from April 2007; the second was from the current issue of the Daily Princetonian. Both articles were about e-books, and though they came from different times and slightly different perspectives, there was a similar underlying theme
The blogpost in Computer World was one of those ubiquitous lists found all over the Internet. This one was called “Don’t Believe the Hype: The 21 Biggest Technology Flops.” It outlined several heralded gadgets and technologies that never took off. I am a sucker for this kind of list, and I enjoyed reading about the usual suspects, the Apple Newton, Microsoft Bob, the paperless office; then I came to:
The e-Reader
At this point, the biggest e-Reader was the Sony, and the article said that there was not a good enough machine and not enough content to make the purchase worthwhile. Similarly the reading experience was criticized, ” Some folks find them unwieldy; others say they’re difficult to use. And for many people, there’s just no replacing the old-fashioned, reassuring feel of paper.”
November of 2007 the Kindle was released. Since that time it has sold over half a million units and millions of books have been sold. Recently the Kindle edition of Dan Brown’s novel, The Lost Symbol sold more of the Kindle version than the regular hardcover. Sales for the Sony e-Reader have also increased, and there are other companies, including rumors of Apple and Microsoft, jumping into the mix.
The second article “Kindles yet to woo University users” is a post-Kindle expression of many of the same ideas as the first. The author talks about a pilot program providing Kindles with course reading materials preinstalled for students. Though the university expected positive results, the article cites “many” student complaints, “But less than two weeks after 50 students received the free Kindle DX e-readers, many of them said they were dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the devices.”
The article goes on to discuss the student complaints including problems with citation, problems with annotation and highlighting, and problems with the unfamiliar form factor. The unstated conclusion seems to be that the experiment is a flop and students will return to traditional texts for the foreseeable future.
I wonder if the author of the list of 21 flops would have included e-books in his list if he knew that the Kindle was coming. Likewise, the writer from the Princetonian makes assumptions about the future of a platform based on a somewhat shaky start. I agree with many of the criticisms of the Kindle, but I see these as areas of growth, not dead ends. The Courier, a new tablet from Microsoft seems to address many of them. The need to move away from paper textbooks for convenience, for environmental factors, and for economic reasons is a stronger drive than the weaknesses of the early unit.
This article falls victim of the limitation of much of the media’s approach to technology. There are only two angles for articles. The first is the “Oh, wow!” article, commenting on how wonderful a new technology is, and then there is the “Ha-ha” article, showing how a bright new technology flops (I suppose by grouping all of this writing into two camps I am just as guilty of over-simplifying). The reality of course is not nearly so simple as this.
When evaluating new platforms, we need to take a long view. Many of the devices introduced today will not pan out long term, but many of them will succeed on their own path and their own timetable. Even some of the flops will have an important role in the evolution of effective devices (interesting rumors about an Apple pad swirled this week after Apple rehired the man who created the Newton). Maybe today’s flops are just ahead of their time.