I first heard about e-readers in 2000 or 2001, in an adventure game forum called Rivenguild (long gone now). The adventure games Cyan made (Myst, Riven) used these 'linking books' which each had a reactive panel that you 'touched' to go to different places in the game. A fellow fan thought we might be intrigued by interactive readers and passed along a link to Sony's press release about the upcoming e-ink technology they were perfecting. I've wanted an e-reader that long!
I found MobileRead while doing some practical research on e-readers. Seemed like many of the most intelligent answers to my questions turned up here, so when we finally got dear hubby an e-reader, I joined the conversation.