The Gateway to Progress & Prosperity begins with Seizing the Future

3 months ago

In the last few years, e-reader technology has transformed the publishing industry and driven the sales of printed books to a decline. It is a powerful concept that threatens to replace the oldest and most durable form of media in the history of mankind.
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But let's not forget that when it first got out, consumers showed no interest in the technology for over 5 years. The last couple of years have given rise to digitization whereby we are seeing every industry getting digitalized. It started with music down to television, and presently e-books have become a worldly accepted thing.

The breakthrough

This doesn't take away the fact that e-books had issues with adoption because users had difficulty enjoying the reading process since they had to be confined to their computers to read the contents. The bright computer monitor was a great obstacle to the advent of e-reading. Early devices like RocketBook and Softbook had a lot of flaws, as a result, e-books were never considered as serious challenges to print media.

It was a small Massachusetts company that finally made the wide adoption of e-books possible. The biggest obstacle which was finding a suitable screen to perfect the user's experience was removed. They created a new way of displaying texts on screen. They removed pixels and replaced them with millions of microcapsules. Those microcapsules were filled with positively charged black pigments and negatively charged white pigments. They were tiny floated in a translucent gel, and displayed black, white, and varying shades of grey. All of this meant even the energy and battery life of devices were saved. The fact that the screen reflected instead of emitting lights improved the reading experience. Today, e-books are available on smartphones too for consumers and book lovers alike.

Digitalization

The commercial impact of this solution gave book publishers a thought process about digitalization. They realized e-readers must be embraced and they started offering their publications in digital formats too. Ultimately, the ability to annotate pages on screen made paperless communication possible. It also made it possible for authors to bypass publishing houses, thereby, keeping a substantial amount of the royalties to themselves.

Accepting a new technology

Although I am still a lover of hard copy books, I must point out how technologies that always shake the advent of time often get overlooked at the very beginning. Most people would try to stop them from existing because it threatens the existence of their businesses or jobs. We have witnessed different revolutions when it comes to jobs, skills, and technological advancement. The key Lesson history never fails to teach is that those who embrace and learn about new technologies have a better chance of thriving and becoming a part of the Labor market. The other party who stays on the sidelines, throwing concerns around, and criticisms might either be late to the party when they finally realize the new technology isn't going away or never gets on the wagon, thus, missing out on an eventful opportunity.

The truth is it takes a lot of deep thinking and understanding to embrace something that threatens your comfort zone. Especially when it means you need to unlearn the things you already knew and start afresh by learning something new. But it doesn't matter if this looks odd and hopelessly unfulfilling at the beginning, your biggest chances of taking advantage of a new tool, skill, or opportunity is taking a step away from what you knew, and trying to incorporate the learning process of the new one, even though you have to do it gradually.
Nothing good ever comes out of standing on the sidelines. You will only be wasting your potential. The fact that e-books are now widely accepted and a lot of people are making a killing with Amazon KDP should teach you an important lesson about history.

Hive & Expected Adoption

Right now, some people are still sitting on the sidelines watching as we try to put two and two together on Hive. We have been experimenting with a lot of projects. Some have failed. Some are struggling. Some are thriving. Regardless of what worked in the past, what is working currently, and what we think is going to work tomorrow, our best chances at standing out of the crowd will be if each of us contributes our quota as we are currently doing. Soon, the rest of the world will come to identify themselves with us, and it will make the phrase, "Build and they will come", a reality in the breakthrough of Hive.