[Summary] Here is a conclusion in the form of quotes. The dates indicated here are the dates when these texts - excerpts from email interviews - were written and first published. Their authors are Michael Hart (August 1998), John Mark Ockerbloom (September 1998), Robert Beard (October 1998), Jean-Paul (June 2000), Nicolas Pewny (February 2003), Marc Autret (December 2006), Pierre Schweitzer (January 2007), Denis Zwirn (August 2007), Catherine Domain (April 2010) and Henk Slettenhaar (June 2011). *** Here is a conclusion in the form of quotes. The dates indicated here are the dates when these texts - excerpts from email interviews - were written and first published. # August 1998 "We consider etext to be a new medium, with no real relationship to paper, other than presenting the same material, but I don't see how paper can possibly compete once people each find their own comfortable way to etexts, especially in schools." (Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg in 1971) # September 1998 “I've gotten very interested in the great potential the net has had for making literature available to a wide audience. (…) I am very excited about the potential of the internet as a mass communication medium in the coming years. I'd also like to stay involved, one way or another, in making books available to a wide audience for free via the net, whether I make this explicitly part of my professional career, or whether I just do it as a spare-time volunteer." (John Mark Ockerbloom, founder of The Online Books Page in 1993) # October 1998 "The web will be an encyclopedia of the world by the world for the world. There will be no information or knowledge that anyone needs that will not be available. The major hindrance to international and interpersonal understanding, personal and institutional enhancement, will be removed. It would take a wilder imagination than mine to predict the effect of this development on the nature of humankind." (Robert Beard, founder of A Web of Online Dictionaries in 1995) # June 2000 "Surfing the web is like radiating in all directions (I am interested in something and I click on all the links on a home page) or like jumping around (from one click to another, as the links appear). You can do this in the written media, of course. But the difference is striking. So the internet changed how I write. (...) I have finally found in online publishing the mobility and fluidity I was seeking.” (Jean-Paul, founder of the hypermedia website cotres.net in 1998) # February 2003 "I see the digital book of the future as a 'full work' putting together text, sound, images, video and interactivity: a new way to design, and write, and read, perhaps on a single book, constantly renewed, which would contain everything we have read, a single and multiple companion. Utopian? Improbable? Maybe not that much!" (Nicolas Pewny, founder of Editions du Choucas in 1992) # December 2006