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The Myth of the Paperless Office
AdamBa writes: "The New Yorker is running an
interesting review
of the book
'The Myth of the Paperless Office', also discussing
'Scrolling Forward'. Read
it and the ever-informative
Malcolm Gladwell will
explain why paper enables collaborative work much better than computers do, why a messy desk is a sign of productivity, and give a little background on the inventor of the Dewey Decimal System to boot."
....of the book ?
Or is someone just taking the myth ?
"why a messy desk is a sign of productivity"
wrong. Whether or not your producing is a sign of productivity, not the state of your desk.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Without paper, how will woodcutters get paid? Help the workers! Buy paper!
One Word. Resolution. Until you can buy a computer monitor for very cheap that has the resolution that paper does, the paperless office will never succeed.
The day your office gets paperless is the same day your officebuilding burns down to the ground.
a messy desk is a sign of productivity
Well now I guess I"m the most productive guy in the office!
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
Has obviously seen Office Space. I think that's an exact quote from Michael Bolton to the two people restructuring the company. A great movie, and computers definitely can replace office paper, besides the necessary printing paper. A catch-22?
A messy desk is a sign of no organisation. I keep my papers nice and stacked.
With paper you don't need,
Batteries
Network connection
Power plug
Monitor
Keyboard or mouse (pen though)
Paper is about the most reliable form of interoffice communication there is. You can take it with you anywhere, you can read it anytime you want. It's lightweight, and neatly folds up into a smaller space. If you need security, paper can be burned or shredded. If you get really bored, you can make airplanes out of paper.
You want games? Paper has some of the most ancient and popular games ever. Tic tac toe, connect the dots to name a few. Paper even has an intuitive interface for making your own games. In fact it's so easy a toddler can do it!
Paper in volume can be used to prop up a montior to eye level that doesn't have a stand. Have a table with a leg that's a little short? Easy enough, some folded paper under the affected leg will make that table stand on all 4 legs like new again.
Girls love paper! Write a love letter, send a card, these will allways get you more brownie points with your signifigant other than electronic methods.
Paper has been used for thousands of years, without paper, we wouldn't have the great teaching of our forfathers. Our constitution was written on paper!
Have you hugged your paper today?
Draft copies are the biggest reason there will never be a paperless office. If you have a 15 page draft and distribute it to 20 people for comments, trying to organize and incorporate the comments is damn near impossible. Never mind the act of these people commenting is already 3 times harder than it would be if you just gave out hard copy. My boss decided to try "paperless drafts" for documents we were reviewing and it was an abysmal failure. If the IT department thinks it's clunky and convoluted, then everyone else won't think about it at all.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
I bet I could simulate on my actual desk using bits of people and a complex arrangement of folded paper for the Start button.... Would probably be more stable. :)
Anyway, since I got my first printer, I've wasted far more paper than I ever did before having one...
Oooh reading from a computer screen is a little unconfortable. No problem let's keep cutting down those trees.
When I first glanced at the headline I thought it said "The Myth of the Penisless Orifice".
has anyone thought of having layers in a Word processing document (much like having layers in the gimp?). The background for the text and other layers for comments linked to some text (by drawing a circle or highlighting the section you wish to comment on)?
When I'm at my desk, I prefer electronic copies by far. I abhor killing trees needlessly. I also like that I can reproduce and transmit information instantly.
.paper format can be read by anyone anytime, provided they know the language, sans a particular out dated electronic drive or reader. I also don't need power to read paper, just light.
However - paper is the lowest common denominator. All it takes is a pair of eyes and a marking device to use it. When I need reliable backups, they get printed and stored in a fire safe. Sure CDROMS and tape last a long time, and I can mirror disks - but the
Sure, eventually 99% of info will be contained in an electronic format, and rightly so, paper will be around forever.
My boss had me write, rewrite, change, edit and perfect an online project request system. After all that work I had to add a "Print Document" button to the bottom of every page. Not only did they want a fully functional advanced online system, they wanted the paper trail too. And not only that, but with everyone printing out each page, the paper trail is about 10 times as big as the one sheet handed around the office.
They never gave me a clear reason for this. All I can think of is that the big bosses don't trust computers. But this is a web design company. Go figure.
The paperless office can't apply to some business models, sure.. but programming teams, tech support personnel, secretarial pools, etc can all easily stop killing off the rain forests with a little common sense. I couldn't believe how much paper we wasted on memos at my last "office" job, a dozen sheets a day with memos that just went to the garbage just as quickly as I could have hit the "delete" button in our e-mail client. "Did ya check out the memo on the DPS reports, Peter"?
["Marge, I agree with you - in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory." - Homer]
MS offers collaboration with netmeeting. Multiple people can edit the same document at once. It's also built into Exchange Server 2000. Other compnies must be offering similar solutions. Why aren't IT shops looking into it?
When he got an email, he would print it out, then scan it, so that he could store the image in a document management system.
I have to admit that sometimes I really want to sit down with a red pen and a paper draft. When I have to send my comments to somebody else electronically, however, I'd rather work on the computer than have to retype all my scribbled comments.
There are tools for this, but they just aren't that commonly used. The best one I've found is the full version of adobe acrobat. You can print just about anything to a PDF, and then use Acrobat to draw on it (circle things, draw arrows, highlight, etc) and include comments on anything you draw. There is even an option to create a second document with all of your comments that makes a great checklist for the next revision. PDFs are also common enough that I can send these marked up documents to just about anybody and expect them to be able to see and read my comments.
Again, I don't think we'll get to the paperless office in my lifetime, but we could get a lot closer using the tools that are available.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
A paperless office will never happen, but not because it wouldn't be possible, or even better. I think up little things all the time, that I start doing electroncically, instead of scribbled on this note or that napkin, or whatever. But I'm one of the guys that makes computers work, that understands them. In corporate america, I'm 1 in 100, or even 1000. The rest are still stuck in the 15th century, and if you don't believe me, duck into the helpdesk call center. The sad thing is, by the time computers are smart enough to do the thinking for these retards, they'll also be able to do the job for them.
But maybe I'm being too cynical. Maybe M$ makes it too hard for people, hell, if I had to run Word every time I wanted to scribble a note, I'd want to chop down a tree and felt some paper too. Would be easier. When I was a winslave, I remember numerous times, where I wanted a simple spreadsheet, just some columns with numbers, etc. And they only option was tabbing over in notepad(preferred) or opening Excel (to be avoided). Sc takes care of that stuff now.
Things I enjoy about paper:
+ It doesn't crash
+ It rarely loses data
+ 100% availability with proper care
+ Annotations are simple
+ Easy to take with you
+ Content doesn't change
+ Extremely quick access and intuitive interface
+ High resolution/easy on the eyes
Things I don't enjoy about paper:
+ Indexing/searching is tedious
+ Backups can be difficult
Right now, the list of pros/cons favors paper for me. PDAs are starting to reduce some of the cons (i.e. easy to take with you) but still suffer from most of the rest. About the only time a paper document becomes "unavailable" is when it gets lost. Can the same be said for your PC or PDA?
The crisp black-on-white is easy to read. Some LCD panels have text that is pretty easy to read at low resolutions (i.e. 1024x768 at around 100 pixels per inch) but can't touch the level of detail of even a cheap laser printed page of 300 dots (pixels) per inch. Professional typesetting often gets up to 2400 dots per inch. Not even close. This often doesn't matter for text, but what about that detailed network diagram that gets turned to mud at 100dpi. (Don't even get me started on people who use lossy compression on such images...)
Annotations are a given with paper-- just grab a pen and go to town. In the digital world, each and every software package needs to explicitly support annotations in order for this required ability to be present. So far as I know, no major PDF viewer allows one to take notes on it, so off to the printer it goes! (I realize that some PDF authoring software allows this kind of thing. The ones I have seen were masterpieces of overengineering and were correspondingly priced. What's wrong with a basic "notes in the margin" feature included at no cost?)
Until the massive inconveniences of using digital media are resolved, paper will continue to play a dominant role in exchanging and storing information.
1) I can read it while standing in a train.
2) I scribble over it and keep these notes for later reference.
and most importantly,
3) I can take it with me to the loo where I can read it at leisure.
This underlying falacy was coined (by whom - that would be interesting to research..) by two different sorts of people trying to do two very different things:
1) one was a cost-analysis expert trying to rationalize an expensive investment in hardware and software
and..
2) at the other end of the spectrum, a polyanna futurist concocting a forecast of the brave new world we would soon be joining.
The biggest problem -- and here I'd probably blame the popular media -- is that our culture bought into the idea and it became it's own self-replicating meme.
The big problem is that the fundamental idea is a bunch of cr*p.
At some point, I'm very, very sorry, but at some point we need hard copy.
This will be true for some time, I would think, if not indefinitely...
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
To me it seems like I can think about what I'm reading more easily if its in dead tree format. Its certainly easier to read code on paper for me (most of the descreet bits of code I have to read print out to between 5 and 50 pages. Longer things would be much more unwieldy.)
If I'm working on a config file I'd rather have a book open beside me than try and flip back and forth between a README and an ssh window.
Even just reading text seems easier to comprehend on paper than the same text on screen does.
The 'freedom' of handwritten scribble, anywhere on the sheet, as compared to restricted rigidity of type...
The 'freedom' of self-written hacks, anywhere on the machine/OS, as compared to the restricted rigidity of a system...
I know that I use paper for tons of things, and would much rather type for tons of others. OSS and 'boxed' apps have their places...
Where I work, it's all done on whiteboards. We've even considered buying one of those doohickeys that captures Whiteboard drawings. Paper is not so important, but it is 2nd place with laptops being a distant 3rd.
Where I work, in particular, we need a couple more ingredients in order to become close to paperless: Tablet PC's and roaming wireless capability. Tablet PC's are obvious, the stylus interface would lend itself much better than dragging a laptop to the meeting. Wireless roaming is a little harder to define, though. 802.11 will definitely do the job, but the biggest paper offenders also travel alot. If the tablet could wirelessly get on the internet from wherever the destination is, then I think I could convince some of the people here to adopt it instead of paper.
I'm starting to see wider use of PDA's (mostly Palm Pilots) being used for keeping contact info, but I'm not seeing a whole lot of note taking on them. A couple of us around here drag our laptop to meetings to take notes. This is why I think the tablet idea might work. Despite the simplicity of a laptop, undocking it and setting it up at the meeting seems like such a hassle compared to bringing a notepad.
"Derp de derp."
Contrast: monitor contrast is WAY lower than paper, it's harder on the eyes than a sheet of paper is
Glare: monitor glare makes things hard to see
Portability: until you have a 2-ounce monitor that you can hold in your hand while reclining in your chair, paper's got you beat.
I'm sure there's more. Personally, even beeing the computer-geek that I am, I MUST do the final editing of any document I produce with a paper printout. I don't know why, but it's just SO much easier.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Maybe paper is good for collaboration, but not for archival. I don't collaborate at home, so I don't use paper.
... 449 files right now. And it all fits on one CD. Why do I even need a monthly paper statement? Just send it in email please and I'll save the file on disk.
I hate paper enough that I am almost done scanning years worth of pay stubs, credit card statements, statements, time sheets, repairs, orders, taxes,
A few years ago, when we first got an email system at work, whenever my boss wanted to show me an email someone sent him he would PRINT IT OUT AND HAND IT TO ME instead of just forwarding it.
He's learned since then, but sheesh. It annoyed the hell out of me.
The article assumes that the we cannot get rid of paper because of paper's advantages in reading and composition/designing. It ignores the advantages of paperless technology accrued during transfer and for reference purposes.
I work for a company that produces intranets for franchise companies. They realize huge savings in printing and shipping costs by making their dozens of manuals and ad materials available through their intranets. If the sub-organizations want hard copies they can print them. That's the shipping savings. However, the savings in printing costs are not simply transfered to the end user, because the end user only prints a small fraction of these documents, because they are there for reference not cover to cover reading.
Documents that are hand read by every end user do not lend themselves well to paperless technology. However, documents that must be made available for use but in actuality are only used occasionally and even then in a piecemeal fashion, can generate significant savings if distributed through paperless means rather than traditional routes.
stipe42
I had this question asked to me in a job interview for an IS manager of a small city. I can only go by the look on the interviewer's faces, an obvious look to me of "that's not what we wanted to hear" and the following questions that my answer of "No, I believe computer only allow you to make more paper", that it's a good reason that the other finialist got the job. I still think I answered it correctly and have no regrets in doing so.
Besides everything you need to know or do is on a post-it anyway. You just can't find where you stuck it.
and a lot of the time I just load the map in my web browser and keep my laptop open while I am driving around.
I think that the reason we still don't have paperless offices is because we don't have any good colaborative software packages. It would be nice to be able to have an open file format that would allow version tracking and annotation of documents. Not to mention a layer on top of this that would allow you to manage all the documents by project.
I think the real reason people dont like digital media is because it locks you into using a screen and keyboard instead of a more general interface like a pencil and paper. Personally I will sometimes jot down a quick sketch then markup with some notes and maybe write a few equations. Even with math you have to use some keyword instead of the natural traditional notation that isnt present on modern keyboards or worse yet the symbols are burried 3 levels deep in choice of menus. With a computer you have to define every character and it must be recognized explicitly as a valid character. THis forces you into a menu system of selecting characters so instead of translating the thought or word directly into the symbol from mind to hand. You are forced to go thru a couple more layers of abstraction of user interface instead of just writing the desired character.
why a messy desk is a sign of productivity
:)
WOHOO!
My room is super productive!
Hey, next time I have a slow day at work, I'll just make a mess to make sure my day was a productive one!
You can't take the sky from me...
People can read text just fine at 12 pixels high. Nobody ever complains about the resolution of dot-matrix signs being too low.
Pictures taken at 640 by 480 look just fine. Sure, they could withstand getting closer to them at higher DPI, but it suffices just fine. The point I'm making is that DPI has little to nothign to do with why people still use paper. The main reason it's still used in the office environment is that there isn't a technological alternative that has all the same requirements. Laptops are harder to set up than taking a notepad into a meeting, and PocketPC's are too small.
I think Microsoft is doing the right thing by pursuing the Tablet PC market the way they are. They're trying to make the Tablet PC as good as paper. If you ever catch their marketing video on it, it portrays people drawing on their tablet with the stylus, highlighting/copying/pasting, etc. I think this is the first step. The second step would be to make it really light and connect wirelessly. The 3rd would be to make it dirt cheap. Get a few of these floating around your office and you'll see a dramatic reduction in paper usage.
"Derp de derp."
The thing most posters here are glossing over is the major point of the article - that paper is being used in greater quantities, but not so much to keep things around. I can second this in my own experience - almost all the work I do is in a computer somewhere, but almost all of it has to get printed out to show to someone for comments or to present to a client.
Little of the paper is actually useful after a few months, so I end up just sticking it all in a box with the date on it here and there and never looking at it again. If I need "that one document" it is almost always on the computer.
There is, however, no way on earth to get good meetings done with just a computer. Paper is great for the short-term.
Although their conclusions are accurate, the end result is NOT that paperless office will fail forever. In my opinion that's what they're hinting at. Even today the current and up and coming workers are mostly from a world without computers. They will use paper the rest of their lives. It's like trying to unlearn how to walk. We will see actual change in ~15-20 years in my opinion.
Try wiping your butt with a PDA. You'll experience new-found admiration for PAPER!
Ad luna, Alicia! Ad luna!
To quote someone famous (but I can't remember who) "We'll see a paperless toilet before we see a paperless office".
Input error. Replace user and press any key to continue.
...is the lack of interoperability between different programs on different systems. You don't need the latest version of MS Eyes 2002 to read a paper document. Despite all of the advances in user interfaces, computers are still hard to use.
Not to mention that everyone is always more trusting of paper copies. It is usually very easy to discover if a paper copy has been altered.
When you are able to talk to your computer in plain language, ie "Bring up the invoice from last month" you might be able to begin to eliminate paper. Don't get me wrong, computers are great for indexing and retreiving data. Getting the data into the computer is the hard part.
Who forgot to order more?
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
It all comes down to "the right tool for the job." Or perhaps also, "the right tool for the skill set."
For me, I am always looking for ways to eliminate paper, but I find it critical in three ways:
When I walk into my office each morning, my brain instantly recognizes things I left out on my desk or my chair, prioritizing things by location, color, proximity to other things, etc. When I turn on my PC, I have to wade through the emails and documents to remember everything as I had left it last night.
I can't remember everything, and I certainly can't remember where I put everything in my file system. My desk, and all the paper on it, is basically my brain's virtual memory; it's easier and faster to swap things in and out by jotting and scanning notes on paper.
When you type stuff into a document, you (I) have a tendency to think about formatting as well as the content. I waste time and enslave myself to the look of the thing, even if it's only notes for myself for later! Ridiculous. People generally don't do that (as much) with paper, so I think there is generally more of a creative flow when using paper.
Again, much of this goes back to what job you're doing. I try to eliminate paper if I don't have to use it, but after all I am an analog creature in a physical world, and I relate to my surroundings in complex ways. My relationship with the computer is so much more simplified that it is not always right to refuse to use paper.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
I work for a large-ish telecomm. provider in Colorado (we're an IXC) who shall remain nameless. Over the past year we have scrapped the idea (and practice) of completing our site preventative maintenance reports electronically. My coworkers and I think this is a ridiculous idea for a supposed "forward thinking" company.
Usually, our monthly reports total only a few pages, but the quarterly and annual reports can go up to 8 pages.
I have attrocious handwritng..I'll admit it. I also type a lot faster than I can print by hand. So now it takes me about 1.5 times longer to complete a total report. Also, I have to make a copy for the boss, using carbon paper(!), to take back to our main office...I was amazed to find out they still produce carbon paper :) When the boss receives our reports, we go over the results and address any problems we might have encountered at the site. This used to be a short and relatively painless process. Now it stretches out into an hour-long inquisition, because my boss can't read what I've written...when before, I had to correct the odd typo and resend it to him. Multiply this by four sites per tech. by six techs. My boss probably wastes 5X the amount of time he used to just going over PM reports.
Also, when these reports were kept on our laptops, we could hunt down information quickly instead of having to get the hard copy from the boss (if he's even in his office) or, god forbid, drive back out to the site that's 2 hours away.
This retro use of paper has been creeping into other things as well. We now fill out daily activity logs, by hand, and fax them to the boss at the end of the week...when a daily email would suffice.
I don't know...this whole attitude seems to fly in the face of reason. Has anyone else out there gone from electronic back to paper?
An example of research in user interfaces is Denim which aims to marry the advantages of old fashioned pen+paper design with the convenience of having the computer handle the details. The idea is to allow the designer to freely sketch with a tablet but also add hyperlinks between sketches as the design progresses. There's a sample of the generated mockup, but really the videos on the page linked above are really neat. They show a person using a tablet to do a sample design. The software also incorporates some other modern interface ideas such as the zoomable UI and the pie menu.
If I recall, one of the various user interface paradigms Apple was working on in the 80's-90's (circa Taligent and Pink) was an interface specifically called "Piles" based on some of this research.
While that never saw the light of day, the lessons learned from that research made their way into the Standard Macintosh bibles of user interface design. To wit:
This is, IMHO, one reason why the classic Mac OS interface was so amazing. You (the user) had complete freedom in organizing the documents on your computer however you wished. Spacially, color-based, or sorted. You could store your documents in whatever made sense to you, without the operating system declaring the Right Place for documents (ie, home directory, etc.. a la Windows and Unix).
Some people's Macs made sense only to their user, which is just how it should be - considering that it's a PC
Now with Apple moving to unix underpinnings which, thanks to the rigidness and inflexibility built into unix, don't allow for this type of "personal organization", it's difficult to find a system design that understands this.
This is the NUMBER ONE problem "old-school" Mac OS users have with Mac OS X - being told that they have to organize things in a certain way (ie, "in your home directory") and the thing that people coming to Mac OS X from a standard unix background don't (can't) understand.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
One other thing that makes paper & pen so great is that the learning curve is basically nonexistent.
It really is so easy a child could use it. My 2-year-old is doing at least as well with paper and Crayolas as some of my former bosses ever did with their computers.
<seriously>No matter how good computer interfaces get, until they interact with us via speech, posture, gesture, and touch in the same way that we interact with each other, there will be a learning curve prior to adoption, and this will have a negative impact on adoption.</seriously>
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
was in the throws of a paper reduction campaign, one of the poor MIS guys who sits beside me was tasked with determining which paper reports were no longer needed. He ran across a report that had been custom crafted for one of our CFO's 14 years ago. Even though this particular CFO retired 9 years ago, his report was still being printed. Here's the kicker, the report was an item by item sales summary for the company. No problem when we only stocked 8000 items in 50 stores. We've grown to 750 stores stocking 50,000 items, and the report had grown to +/-3000 pages. At least it was being recycled.....
I should add to this that the need to sit down at a computer and instantly know where everything is/should be is more a function of "mass management" than anything else.
Standardization is good for the IT worker who has to "manage" 300 machines, but it's bad (because it doesn't promote individual - custom - work organization) for the person who actually uses the machine.
Unix was designed around the "big server, small user" metaphor. Personal computers that didn't come out of IBM and MS were designed around the "single machine, single user" concept where the user is supposed to have FULL control of the machine.
As another aside, I've known people whose (virtual) desktops were disaster areas, but they could find anything they needed WITHOUT using Sherlock or the Find command. Why? Because a) they put the documents there, and b) the documetns they didn't put there were easily identifiable and few in number.
a) speaks to why forcing a user to pur their documents in "My Documents" or their home directory is a Bad Thing, and
b) speaks to why Windows, with it's 1000's of files in the c:\winnt\ directory named like license plates, is no better for the user. Try poking around in a Mac OS 9 Extensions folder for example. Everything is clearly labelled and self-evident in purpose, even in the heyday of the 7.5 System Folder bloat.
The point of all this? I don't know.. I felt like ranting. But shouldn't the user be the master of the computer, and not the other way around?
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
I'm currently in the process of developing an office management solution in-house for the company I work for. We've been in heavy development for a year, and let me tell you that while this doesn't make the office completely paperless, we've reduced a great deal of paper use around here.
Aside from that, we've gained productivity from it. The process is much more streamlined for our technicians, as they no longer have to keep track of paper orders anymore. The only paper we ever have around is purely for backup purposes, in order to leave a paper trail; if we wanted to, we could completely cut the paper altogether.
The last benefit is something upper management loves - that's the ability to instantly analyze all the company data, and spit it out into something they can use. The paperless office isn't a myth, it's just that most people don't know what they're dealing with. I know for us, it took a great deal of training and practice, but I would say that we're more efficient now than we ever were on paper.
...there will never be a paperless office.
"Can I print it out?" is the most oft-heard phrase in IT. Satellite images of the Pacific Northwest slowly fade from green to brown as the laser and inkjets churn out page after page after page of documents that nobody reads.
The quote is and remains, "if it can't be described on a single 8.5x11 sheet of paper, it cannot be understood." I have an additional quote. "The only person who reads every page of a 50-page work of non-fiction is the person who wrote it."
But the more fundamental problem is this: the current group of GUIs for computers are terribly inefficient when trying to keep up with a time-limited multiple-task environment like air traffic control. Note that ATC displays are monochrome text and dots, not 50 fps, 3D-enhanced, voxel-textured, next-generation, quad-GPU multimedia extravaganzas.
Trying to get a lot of small items of information into multiple places with the current "desktop computers" is a task apparently best suited to an xterm. No mouse required, no navigating a little pointer all over the place, no looking for things, no browsing. Also, the GUI on Windows is a royal pain to use when trying to read from one application and type in another. Bah.
Just some rambling thoughts.
this guy is heretic and is proposing conspiracy theory that computers are not useful. Truth is that most software is not useful, not computers. And until programmers themselves get to listen to people and people *really* listen to programmers/power users. Such tools can be made in a flash if there was an agreement to use a single tool/interface standard. Yes we can replace paper, given we have thousands of simple customized programs for user types and integrated archival search system. But that is not possible under current conditions, because of politics. Yes there will resistance on multitude of levels to use of new stuff. Web pads can be created using many readily available processors.
Because of the reality of technology, it is new and radical - there will be new ways of using technology, many may not be used to it, like were not used to using telephone, but those hurdles will be overcome, and many people will user virtual offices.
Most people are not interested in technology, they just want it to make things easier. But it won't, it will just put efficency on a new level. It will make us smarter, if we invest into learning basic blocks on computer technology. Change is hard, and is often met with fear and hostility on many levels. It will take some time to rid ourselves of paper.
just use cvs for your docs
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I'm one of the guys that makes computers work, that understands them. In corporate america, I'm 1 in 100, or even 1000. The rest are still stuck in the 15th century, and if you don't believe me, duck into the helpdesk call center. The sad thing is, by the time computers are smart enough to do the thinking for these retards, they'll also be able to do the job for them.
You probably make a lot of computer decisions out there for others, and that you might have some skills that others in your office don't have, but the reality is that there are plenty of people out there that have zero time in their day looking out for their computers. That is your job. They are experts in their job.
From your comments, let me take a stab at your personality...
You're probably one of those assholes that make people feel stupid abut their taste in movies, operating systems, and religion. Please prove me wrong. Tell me when people look at you they don't see everything that is wrong with fat, smelly, elitist, dateless losers that run their computers. I'm going out on a limb here, but I bet the word 'tolerant' has never been used to describe you. Do you even have a social life? Or do people see you as an asshole because you project that on them?
Here is an analogy for you... What if you had to fill out and do your own W-2 form every year from the company and messed it up? Would anyone go behind your back and call you an idiot for not being an expert in taxes? Tax records are complex and controlled by a select few people in the know, just like computers. DO THEY WALK AROUND LIKE THEY ARE GOD?
Get over yourself.
People have other problems in the world than to take your Think Geek T-Shirts seriously.
When I finish reading a paper book, I can give it to my friend, and they can enjoy it.
"We of the OS community who disapprove of MS Word as the near-universal medium of exchange should come up with our own document format..."
.DOC format, then add into it the ideas of what you'd do to improve it, and then design a format to include all these ideas.
.DOC format is useful is that it does quite a bit of stuff. It supports all kinds of formatting, it encapsulates things like images, and it's openable on all MS platforms including PocketPC. I can send a .DOC file to just about anybody I know and they have SOME way of opening it, one way or another.
If you're going to attempt this, let me give you a piece of advice: Don't let what MS did wrong be your guide. Look at what they did right.
In a reply to Black Parrot's post, somebody started immediately with "don't support plugins so there'll be no bloat...". I appreciate the idea, but that's not the right way to start a new file format. What you need to do is make a list of what MS is doing right with the
The reason the
Once you have those features in place and you know how it should look, only then do you start looking at some of the lessons that MS has learned. Here's an interesting question: why is it bloated? What is MS doing? Are they encrypting it? Are they adding a bunch of bits to it that might be activated later? Did they write a function called 'BloatFile($Filename)'?
I think the main reason that Linux isn't gaining much ground as a desktop OS is because people are actively trying to fix problems that they think plague MS os's, but they're not looking at what MS did right! They quickly dismiss the idea that MS created software that people want and just assume that they make crap and stupid people buy it. Well, if you want to make Linux a better Operating System, then look at what MS did right. For example, out of the box, any Windows OS has TONS of drivers going back many years. Nearly all MS written apps have the same or nearly the same interface. Installation is a breeze. (Not having to create a swap partition is nice.) Doing something like 'change the color depth of my monitor' is as simple as clicking your mouse 3 or 4 times. If they'd develop Linux to be more like Windows in this respect, they'd get a lot farther in the desktop market than trying to fix only the flaws they percieve.
"Derp de derp."
Paper User Interfaces for Paper Documents
I've been working on a product for a few years that uses paper as a user interface , kind of a follow-on to the graphical user interface. I used to joke with friends that I was working on an 8.5x11 inch 400 dpi gray-scale display that costs 2.5 cents.
Document Tokens -- making paper a first class citizen on the network
You scan your documents, and they get stored in a document repository on the network (using WebDAV over HTTP or some other protocol), and it prints out a piece of paper that refers to the electronic document on the network, kind of a like a paper document or a paper URL. I named it a "Document Token". You drop it in your copier, for example, press the big green button, and it automatically recognizes it, retrieves the original, and prints it back. Or if you asked it to e-mail the scanned document instead, it will e-mail the document as an attachment or just a hyperlink.
Cover Sheets as Forms
Another thing you can do is print out a cover sheet with checkboxes on it and some document meta-data built in, so you can drop the cover sheet for your "Legal Contracts" on top of the latest contract you got, check the box for the account you're dealing with, and press the start button. It will scan, store based on the directions embedded in the paper, and associate the document meta-data with the paper.
Situated Meta-Data Capture
One of the most expensive things about scanning is associating the meta-data with the document after scanning. When you have the paper in hand, you know what the document is and where it came from. The file folder or desktop location is right there in front of you, and the physical presence of the document triggers certain kinds of memory as well. In ethnographic terms, the document is what Lucy Suchman calls situated When you try to add meta-data to a document after scanning, you (or worse, someone hired to look at it for you) is staring at a set of bits on a computer screen, completely divorced from its context, and it's expensive to discover where it came from and what it means. If you can associate this information with the paper document when it's in the paper domain, by marking it down on a paper user interface, then you save lots of time and money.
W3C Standardization
For the web to become a truly ubiquitous computing interface, it must move beyond the desktop. We're working with the W3C to standardize an XML representation of forms such that the same form purpose can be expressed in different media -- desktop, pda, mobile phone, and even paper. Take a look at the XForms last-call specification.
Product
The product is called FlowPort
Major barriers to adoption of the paperless office are electricity and ergonomics.
Reading info off a screen takes lots of electricity, even from a backlit LCD. What are some more efficient display technologies?
Reading info off a screen is uncomfortable. We need electronic user interfaces that are just as comfortable and intuitive as paper. What in development is striving for that goal?
On paperless offices, well, heck I was just discussing how well a client would work to view action forms by the helpdesk when another super said, they prefer them on paper. So be it. Paper it is.
Several years ago I was up to my eyeballs in a project of charting trends every which way to Sunday, 800 different charts and 12 copies of each. Gad. I worked with a buddy and we modified the in-house terminal program to show graphs. It blew them away. No more mountains of paper, right? Well, the first question they had was, "how can we print this?" It still reduced paper, but the irony was
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I use a lot of email and i read a lot of online texts... i'm a tech geek at heart. I love new technologies, gadgets, and gizmos as much as anyone.
But there's a very good reason I'll never give up paper totally: Comfort.
It's like the person who eats out at gourmet restaurants all the time, but can't resist a grilled cheese sandwich with canned tomato soup. It's comfort food for the mind.
I love the smell of paper, the texture of it, and the way the printed word looks on it. Paper is a very tactile thing. It's there, you feel it. it's a part of your physical world. Words on a view screen will never compete with it, at least not for me.
As an added bonus, I can read a book for 8 hours straight and not want to dig my eyes out with a spoon.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
60%-80% of all a company's information are stored in documents.
Paper documents have no automated way to enforce document retention standards (just ask Enron and Arthur Anderson)
Paper documents have no way to search the documents to enter the data in the "corporate memory". Infinitely valuable information is never cataloged and reviewed
The reason organizations don't manage this better is most document management syetems are very difficult and expensive to own.
This article takes a reactionary stance to try to promote (another useless) management philosphy and sell a book.
I want to write a book entitled "The Myth of the Management Book That's Not Full Of Crap".
But no one would read it.
A lot of articles here are advocating paper, but I belong to the opposite camp. I hate paper. I can't read my own handwriting half the time, and I can almost never read the shorthand of other people. (Do you have any idea how many people die in hospitals because nurses can't always read the Doctor's hastily scribbled notes properly?)
A paperless office is not only possible, but easy. I worked at a desk for two years without a piece of paper in sight. Everyone else had piles of papers and books, most of which they never touched, but regularly spilled coffee onto. It's just a matter of learning new ways of doing old things. Need to take a note? Notepad. Need to collaborate with colleagues? Email. Need to work simultaneously on a file with others? CVS.
At the place I work now, everything is stored in Exchange public folders. I can search through everything anybody has ever emailed or documented at this company in seconds.
I find it tremendously useful for diagrams, meeting notes, documentation done in the "field", and so on. The main benefit I find is that I can file this kind of information along with the myriad e-mail messages, documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, and other such files that make up my life.
Like many other people have stated, there's something about paper that you just can't replace digitally, at least not yet. I tend to file things electronically, but print them out when I need to "work" with them. The CrossPad helps to cross the digital/analogue streams.
Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a trace of the CrossPad anywhere. Last time I looked I couldn't find it on the Cross site (the one I have I got through eBay). Seiko has a similar kind of device, which I believe uses the same technology that Cross licensed from IBM, but it transmits the images to your Palm-like device. I've never used one, but to me uploading directly to my PC is more useful than to my Palm.
Fuck, man, get over yourself. Inexperienced morons have no place using computers, for the same reason they have no place operating heavy machinery. They'll just cause themselves, and possibly others, grief.
It's assholes like you that think that despite their stupidity, they have a right to play with the same toys as everyone else, and that's a problem.
You know why you don't have to fill out your own W-2? Because if every moron fills their own out, the system will break down that's why they have tax experts. And it's why people like you shouldn't be allowed near a computer until you've proven you have the capacity to use one properly.
I work at a place that has gone a long way towards the paperless office. The paperless office isn't about replacing the GOOD paper like reports and documents. It's about replacing the BAD paper like vacation forms, transfer forms, etc. All that stuff that gets lost, folded, spindled, and then your HMO benefits or direct deposit doesn't get done correctly.
A paperless office is a GOOD THING(tm) but more of a good thing isn't necessarily better.
-CZ
Those of us serving know that the paperless office will never happen, everything has to be filled in triplicate. The pages go as follows:
Copy 1: To the proper destination (If a requesition or time intensive document usualy the trash can)
Copy 2: To be filed localy (Usualy just to prove that you sent it in the first place, but always dissapears when you need to prove it)
Copy 3: To be filled in some large warehouse where everything gets filled. (Ever seen the last scene from raiders of the lost ark?)
Imagine the problems if everything was filled on computers where any dissapearance could be pawned off on a computer error instead of mysterious act of God...
I like replies better than Karma, even if they are flames, because that tells me I got someone thinking.
-- my former manager, upon hearing that the PHB's had invested a lot of money in an untested and very awkward document and form automation system
Dull tools are useless. Sharp tools are dangerous. Never use the sharp end as the handle.
"So, too, with the information-technology wizards who have descended on the workplace in recent years. Instead of a real desktop, they have offered us the computer desktop, where cookie-cutter icons run in orderly rows across a soothing background,implicitly promising to bring order to the chaos of our offices."
Maybe instead of the orderly GUI, maybe we should have the chaotic GUI. A virtual desktop as messy as the real one, and just as disorganized.
"'* reloading from saved state
When I walk into my office each morning, my brain instantly recognizes things I left out on my desk or my chair, prioritizing things by location, color, proximity to other things, etc. When I turn on my PC, I have to wade through the emails and documents to remember everything as I had left it last night.
"
Maybe to preserve the spatial element. Future computers could project onto the retina a virtual picture of were everything is and the relashionship between them. Looking around your information would take on a new dimension.
If a paper map gets shot it still works.
If you get shot paper can be used (in a pinch) as a field dressing.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I think what would be smart would be to hide the filesystem to the user, presenting them with the blank slate of your /home. That way, when you first install, you will have *no* files visible to you, only the ones that you've created, that way, the user will have supreme control over their work, instead of knowing that there is a hierarchy of files beyond their control... Eh?
is that ink and paper is far easier on the eyes than any LCD, and it's nothing to do with resolution of the two. Paper is, and always will be, far easier to read until we come up with some kind of organic material that can change and refresh it's perceived colour quickly.
;)
:P~
The reason the paper is easier to read it that the human eye/brain can interpret and accommodate reflected light (paper) much easier than it can direct light (crt/lcd). Thats why emails get printed, and you still buy a newspaper if you really wanna have a read as opposed to downloading it to your PDA to take to the bathroom
Maybe we will all just have mutations like the gameboy thumb to make us handle this better though
Glenn
The Smrt way to trade CFDs on the ASX
I agree with you. I was mostly responding to the links provided by the previous poster, and, consequently, going off on a tangent.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
Malcolm Gladwell is one of the most fascinating contemporary writers I can think of... His articles have more in common with (good) documentary film than with 96% of the filler churned out for periodicals.
...
His articles in the New Yorker are worth the price of a subscription by themselves...
They are also available online...
He also wrote a wonderful book... "The Tipping Point" that offeres an epidemiological alternative to Dawkins' genetic/biological "memetics"
Fascinating reads... every single article.
the most mysterious thing you'll see today
With Track Changes and Comments enabled. Documents are sent out for everyone to do an initial review and make suggested changes and comments. These are sent to the project manager who incorporates them into one document. The group then gets together for a final review. This is typically done in a conference room with the document projected on a screen for everyone to look at. We debate comments and suggested changes and accept or delete edits. Sometimes an edit will be approved but one or more members of the group can suggest a better phrasing. This works very well for us.
So how is it that the average free software project integrates the work of hundreds of people from all around the globe who may never see each other? Mystery of mystery to the average Word user I'm sure.
Crappy propriatory software is the problem not the solution. Know what happens when you pass out 20 coppies of a "document" at my office? You get a ream of garbage, that's what. Just try sorting through all of it by hand. Why not set up a freaking web page and send a link to ask for comments? Wow, you might even recieve them in the mail and talk to the folks that sent them if you don't understand. If you can't incorporate them into your work, your work is not well organized. Where I work, people have to print everything out because the viewing programs are not well designed. Of course, it's hard to look at a large drawing with M$'s single virtual screen! Hell, it's hard to even organize your work into piles without virtual screens and desktops. Bleh, the "server" to share work? Give me a break, it's been set up into individual home directories with no read permisions that can't be changed, but that's to be expected for an OS that does not have user, group, world file permisions built into the file system and kernel. The rest of the "share" space is chronically disorganized so that all sorts of duplicate junk clutters and clogs it up. Can it be worse? Yes, add Outlook and Access to it. Oultook XP can't handle text anymore and most people are flinging around word docs that they then print and walk a further distance to the printer than to the sender's desk.
Fundamental design flaws made to protect an obsolete marketing model have led to all that, and it's given people a very false impression. My computers at home never crash, yet look at all the posts about how reliable paper is. Paper in my house is something the cat might eat. The computers, running debian and red hat are up 24/7. It's hard for people to imagine things beyond their crappy M$ desktop, and they are so oppressed by the thing at work they don't even want to look at one at home. Should we be supprised when people who look at the 10 lines of text they can read on a doc displayed by word go and print the thing out? Should we be supprised that people who feel like they have to print all of their mail consider email a pain? They think this because they have inadequate tools and don't know there is better stuff in the world.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I agree with this.
In UNIX there is a clear difference between applications and documents and this is a good thing. The user gets full control of where they put documents but the internal workings of where the applications are is hidden.
Installing software is much easier because you don't have to worry about where to install things; you just click the packages you want and they are installed automatically.
On the other hand, documents should be left entirely up to the user. I personally do not use the Evolution mail client because it messes up my
On a macintosh, I have a harder time because I need to know where files are stored on the harddrive to start them. I also get confused because there are many files that I don't know what they are or do.
The limit of girlfriend as age goes to thirty is wife or zero.
When her belly swells, some things get pushed to the side and never come back. No, not those things! I mean dishes, laundry, what not. When it happens you will understand Elvis and "Shake rattle and roll." "Get in the kitchen and make some noise with your pots and pans!" he says. Good luck.
Oh, on topic, people who don't have virtual screens and desktops on operating systems that don't crash and that can serve files with proper permisions, will never believe that an office can work without paper. So sad, too bad, what can you expect from the tiny mummies at the New Yorker? Is your first name Buster?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
--Mike--
The issue of power consumption is silly. People are never going to stop using PCs regardless of how much paper they waste. The PC will sit on their desk burning up electricity even if it's only used to print duplicates of email and view porn. PCs will consume less energy in the future and reprocessed nuclear fuel is a renuable resource much like southern pine.
Finally, rain forests are not being cut for cattle farming and exotic hard wood. Most trees in Brazil are felled for slash and burn agriculture by "settelers", refugees from urban slums. The exotic hardwood is burnt with the rest because few countries will buy it. Cattle farming may move in after the land is exhausted (one year or so for the soil to errode to unusable clay.) but it's not a pimary cause.
The world is what you make it. We can use our resources wisely and make more for each other, of we can let vendors of shoddy wares waste our resources and efforts. Surely, M$ is the primary reason people print all of their junk at work, and the paperless office uses more paper than ever before.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Right now I'm working for a VA (Veteran's Administration) Medical Center, in a nursing unit. While they're moving to paperLESS, it's doubtful that they'll become paperFREE anytime soon.
In some ways, it's quite impressive how they use computers -- doctors and nurse practitioners put all their orders into the computer. Now when a doctor writes a prescription, it immediately shows up on a large LCD screen (called a "Bingo Board," incidentally) in the pharmacy, as well as in the unit the patient is in. When a patient gets an x-ray, there's no need for someone to walk the hard copies of the x-rays to whomever wants to see them, rather, the x-ray can be pulled up on the computers.
But there are other instances where paper will probably never be eliminated. The ward secretary will forever be scribbling notes when a person calls...Patients will still have to sign hard copies of their Advanced Directives.
But the VA is doing a good job of integrating the two mediums. While a hard copy of the patient's Advanced Directive is kept in their chart, the pertinent info is kept in the computer part of their chart, which is accessible from both inside and outside our ward (which is mighty convienant for people working in the emergency room), unlike the hard copy which is kept at our nurse's station.
-Jenn
What is really hard to find around the office anymore is a good eraser. I was recently looking for one of those white erasers I used to have when I was an engineer and none were available. Instead of erasing something, just print out another copy! Even harder to find are the old electric powered erasers that draftsmen used to use. I still have one at my desk more as a conversation piece than anything else. When the pencil-sized eraser is gone, good luck finding another.
Allen
There is no way the paperless office will become a reality until those of us who have grown up with computers (i.e. under 30*) are the dominant force in business. The simple fact is that the vast majority people older than that aren't comfortable enough with computers to give up their precious paper.
My first tech job was a serious wakeup call for me in this respect. I was the youngest tech on the floor, and one of the 10 (out of maybe 40 techs) who didn't print out my email to read it. These were people who lived and breathed tech! My night shift counterpart and I (the only techs under 30) achieved a paperless bay and reaped the troubleshooting benefits of a searchable bay log. People were blown away by how much easier things were, but they couldn't seem to pry themselves away from the little used composition books that every other test bay used.
I could go on and on about my experiences there, but what it comes down to is that the age groups that are dominant in business today are firmly entrenched in paper, and the paperless office will never have a chance until they are replaced by people young enough to not understand the purpose of white-out.
*That's the cutoff point according to my experience. If you are over 30 and comfortable functioning without paper, I applaud you. Please don't be offended.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Oh, some of us do.
It drives some people nuts to see the screen of my computer, because I keep most of my documents in the desktop folder.
Why the hell would I stick them off somewhere and lose them?
Printing any web site is a great way to get lots of scrap paper, too. How many times have I printed a paragraph and an image, and ended up with five sheets, marked with the url and nothing else!
On the plus side, I have really cut back on the number of pages I print each day, since OS X doesn't support my localtalk Oki. :P
That "inflexibility" is born from the need to share information. Once you've more than a single person using a computer, things NEED to be left in a "standard" place for another person to find them. Unix has been multiuser from day one. MacOS and Windows are hacks of single user operating systems that have been kludged to support multiple users, but poorly (ok, this applies more to Windows than MacOS). You could do anything you wanted if you lived in a world all be yourself, but as soon as you want to collaborate with other people, some protocols and rules are required. As more and more people are added, more and more rules are necessary to keep order. Hence the current state of the world -- too damn many people, hence too damn many rules!
we will soon be a paperless society. at the rate that we are using up paper, soon there will be no more trees left to make paper.. i guess we will just have to start wiping our butts with spotted owls
Paper seems to be gradually disappearing from my life. I think this book might be published just in time to be proven wrong. I taken note of paper consumption at various offices, and found the amount of paper consumed per person drops with age.
Pre-baby and baby boomers had learned to judge their productivity as the amount of paper consumed. The main reason for the massive increase in paper usage in the computer age was that, for a very long time, most people associated productivity with pounds of paper. It will take actual generational changes for the attitude to change.
The last engineering team I was on had produced only one half a filing cabinet of paper in a year, and never filled the recycle bucket.
Paper consumption is probably a bell curve. Computers greatly enhanced our ability to produce paper. As older generations die out and new generations take over, we will probably see a gradual drop in per capita paper consumption.
There is a very good chance that the 2001/2002 tech recession will be the cusp. The Wall Street Journal reported about a week ago that there has been a sharp drop in consumption in newsprint in the last year. Newspapers have had both a big drop in advertising and subscriptions. To cut costs, they have been finding ways to trim the size of the paper. Some are cutting the stock quote section...others have simply made the paper a quarter inch smaller.
The big jump in postage prices this year (to $.37) is likely to cut into first class mail. It might provide the incentive to finally switch to electronic billings.
This Slashdot article made a big deal about airlines. Again, I think it was the WSJ, reported this week about pilots finally getting laptops to replace their paperwork. The airline was citing major productivity increase that they hoped to acheive by finally going paperless.
It will take several generations before attitudes shift to the point where a paperless office or society is possible. Personally, I think there is a very good chance that we have hit the maximum paper/person consumption.
The pundits in The Myth of the Paperless Office had fun poking fun at the paperless office prophets of the past. But they may well have published at the top of the consumption curve, and have set themselves up for the next round of ridicule.
Well, computers may have taken over most of the need for paper in the office, but one thing remains a bastion of the office of our fathers, and our father's fathers...
I'm talking of course, about the Paper Aeroplane! Imagine trying to fold up your desktop or laptop to throw it across the room, you just can't get the crisp edges!
Is there anything legal that is more satisfying than hurtling something with aerodynamics rivalling the most modern spaceship straight at somebody's head? Certainly not in an crowded office...
No, I'm serious.
I had my doubts too, but my current manager was adament about it; that's how we do review and markup of documents (I'm a tech writer; there's a LOT of that).
Works perfectly. Click the little paragraph looking button, and everyone's changes are visible, in a different color. Hover the mouse over a change to see who made it. Right-click to accept or reject a change. Or use a Wizard thingie to search sequentially through the changes, accepting or rejecting each one. If it gets too messy to read with all those changes and strikeouts, just click the paragraph looking button again - changes hidden.
It's a heck of a lot more productive than trying to make out chicken scratches on paper. Every proposed change is legible, and you can see who made it and when. We use Word comments to explain changes.
My 2 cents.
Paper will never replace computers until it supports the tag!
We well be using paper until wearable computers are commonplace. I mean wearable computers that track your body movements and get their input from that. Retinal scan displays are propably required too.
:)
Paper will go away once you've got something that's even more easy to use. Why bother finding pen and paper when you can pick up a virtual piece of paper wherever you are
Paper seems to be disappearing from your life, and you're young, so therefore the future holds less paper? Did you ever think that maybe you use less paper because you're in a job where that is possible (no collaboration, no building relationships with suppliers) and that therefore you are not relevant to the article, rather than the article being wrong? I know who I think has set himself up for a round of ridicule.
I haven't seen any comments about this yet. Assuming that tech level, where computers are everywhere, and reliable (mostly), and most employees have a PDA (PADD), paper documents are rarely needed. Does this seem a likely eventuality?
They did try to avoid Q's notice by "printing" the captain's orders to each station instead of using the intercom. Seems a bit silly: if someone can gain access to your data network, it wouldn't matter whether the data was audio or serial.
This is the NUMBER ONE problem "old-school" Mac OS users have with Mac OS X - being told that they have to organize things in a certain way (ie, "in your home directory") and the thing that people coming to Mac OS X from a standard unix background don't (can't) understand.
This is a tradeoff. With more people using the same computer (Mom, Dad, sis, bro, Uncle Chester), segregation of documents is a good thing (specially for ol' Uncle Chester).
Having the OS put some basic structure in place is a good thing, as long as it can abstract and hide the technical cruft. Mac OS X does a good job at thing. The paper analogy might be that there's the freedom to put paper anywhere you want, but the stove and bathtub just ain't good places. The OS (Mom & Dad) beat that into you at an early age.
The paperless office is no more comfortable than the paperless bathroom
I read this a long time ago, and I think it's true. A google search for this phrase gets over 300 hits. Some attribute this to Steve Jobs, 1984.
My desk is messy and I've done nothing but goof off for months. ;-)
A messy desk is only a sign of being too lazy to organize your crap.
People look at me like I'm a fool when I tell them that; since computers and networks have invaded every aspect of our working lives, less and less has been done. Why? Because we spend all our time fucking around with WinBlows crap, Linux minutia, and network hickups.
In the past, people could actually find files, they never got "lost" mysteriously. People talked to one another on proprietary devices called "phones" (no text at all!). People wrote things with paper and pen or typed them for that pro look. It all happened pretty cheaply, certainly not the millions it takes to run a small office today.
Can you copy, cut and paste with paper? OK, you know what I mean. . .
Can it be given to numerous people all over the office building in a matter of seconds?
Is it ever difficult to read Times New Roman or Arial? I.e. Can you read Joe's handwriting from that fax?
Do you want to search through 1000 peices of paper for one phrase that mat take hours?
...when someone invents a paperless toilet.
I'd mod you up if I had points, but alas. To further refine your point, I postulate that the cost-analysis expert understood the *productivity* gains associated with that expensive hardware and software, and was doing the right thing, but to get it past the bean counter, he had to sell it as reducing the cost of office supplies. Some things never change. :)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
the only time in history when there was a completely paperless office was when we wrote everthing down on clay tablets.
I've got a Handspring Visor with a keyboard from Landware, and a little thought-organizing app called Bonzai, which does a nice job of putting data into a tree structure.
It blows pen and pad away, unless I *really* need to sketch something. Otherwise, I can take the ensemble to a meeting and dynamically organize the management-spew into a pretty cohesive order. It also lets me enter items from my outline directly into my To Do list. Pretty handy.
Meanwhile, our administrative assistant is wearing her fingers into nubs, trying to scribble down the minutes.
GMFTatsujin
They key attributes that were keeping controllers on paper strips were not some magical synergy of communication they permitted but simply: 1) in the US at least, annotations by controllers on those strips were legally admissible in the event of accidents and 2) initial attempts to move away from paper strips tried to electronically duplicate the presentation format and data-update methods of the paper strips but those simply don't translate well to computers. In practice, the electronic flight strips are making the controllers more productive so I suspect the researchers mentioned in the book were interpreting their observations to fit their desired conclusions...
[Please don't hit me.]
With tattoo you don't need,
Batteries
Network connection
Power plug
Monitor
Keyboard or mouse (pen though)
Tattoo is about the most reliable form of interoffice communication there is. You can take it with you anywhere, you can read it anytime you want. It's lightweight, and neatly folds up into a smaller space. If you need security, tattoo can be burned or shredded. If you get really bored, you can make airplanes out of tattoos.
You want games? Tattoo has some of the most ancient and popular games ever. Tic tac tatoo, connect the dots to name a few. Tattoo even has an intuitive interface for making your own games. In fact it's so easy a toddler can do it!
Tattoo in volume can be used to prop up a montior to eye level that doesn't have a stand. Have a table with a leg that's a little short? Easy enough, some folded tattooed person under the affected leg will make that table stand on all 4 legs like new again.
Girls love tattoos! Write a love letter, send a card, these will allways get you more brownie points with your signifigant other than electronic methods.
Tattoo has been used for thousands of years, without tattoo, we wouldn't have the great teaching of our forefathers. Our constitution was written on parchment, animal tattoo!
Have you hugged your tattoo today?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
. . . but I do have to say that I was thoroughly impressed the other day when a Mac using friend of mine showed me a neat feature that has been in Mac OS _since_the_7.0_days_. It's called "Publish and subscribe" and is basically a way to work collaboratively on documents. It works beautifully and updates automatically. Beats the hell out of working on a *paper* draft then mailing it to someone and having to wait to have them mail back their changes, which is what you would have to do if you were implemented this in an equivalent paper solution.
It just amazes me that this has been around for forever, and people are getting all excited about "virtual whiteboards" these days. Maybe the reason that there is this "Myth of the Paperless Office" is that companies like Microsoft have hampered progress to the point where the popular paperless software sucks. If companies would actually focus on making _better_ products instead of wiping out competition, we would have a viable paperless office solution.
"[Microsoft] has set back the computing industry by at least 10 years." - The Geek Code
Unfortunatley Unix (not unix itself but the many applications) have put so much crap into the home directory that it is not user-friendly to present that as a desktop. So instead all the systems make a subdirectory called Desktop. From there it is a quick slide to crap like "My Documents" and "My Pictures".
I also think it is interesting that people who complain about the Unix (and Windows) putting types of files into directories (ie an installed app has to spread it's libraries, setup files, and executable into different directories) seem to not complain about this requirement that users segregate their own file types in this way.
When I was in college, I finally hit upon the proper way to write a paper. Not the all-too-common stream of consciousness in Word, but the tried and true method. I would first go to the library and use the electronic catalogue to find the general locations of books on my subject (say, 19th century German naval policy). Then I'd go to that section and browse the shelves looking for more books on the subject than my search had turned up. You see, the old and the new methods were complimentary.
I'd fill my briefcase with books, then head out to the local pub and get a table. I'd spread the books in great piles around me, pull out a sheet of paper and write--in longhand--a very general outline of what I wanted. Writing by hand forced me to think harder about what I was doing, as it is slower than typing. I'd then thumb through the books, noting on index cards what items were interesting (so that I could refer to them later). I'd then improve my outline and flesh it out, each time rewriting it longhand--making me familiar with it, revealing where it lacked &c.
Then I'd write the paper, by hand, from the outline. I'd read through it, and make any corrections which revealed themselves. Finally, I'd return to my flat and format the whole thing in LaTeX. This is where footnotes and the like would be inserted, using those notecards I mentioned earlier. I'd print out a draft, read through it once more, then print a final copy for my professor.
This manual process enabled me to consider the thrust and flow of my papers, of the arguments therein. It enabled me to do far better research than students who relied solely on the electronic index of books. It enabled the best grades of my college career. It also enabled me to enjoy many fine beers at the local pub, which was just fine by me:-)
The computer was no less essential. A paper formatted in LaTeX is a thing of beauty--and this cannot be over-emphasised when discussing the resulting grades. A paper written longhand is unatttractive.
The technologies are not mutually exclusive, but rather complimentary.
The problem with your comparision is that energy consumption is an issue when dealing with the paper vs. computer discussion.
Once a page has been printed, the energy costs to access that information are zero. It can be read once, twice, a hundred times with no further energy required (and no, lights do not count because last I checked most people turn on lights when using their computer -it's a wash). A computer by nature of its design MUST consume energy every time you want to access a given bit of information.
While you point out that most people just leave their computers on all the time, most people do not have to worry about an electrical storm frying their post-its. Paper is a persistant medium that is fairly resilient to damage when compared to its electronic counter parts.
I must also dispute your notion that "PC's will consume less energy in the future" as that goes against historical trends. My 486 USED A 200W power supply. My 400MHz computer used a 250W power supply. I just built a XP1700 that with a 350W power supply (ok, only 300W was needed but I have several peripherals in there). The Pentium IV requires a direct power connection to the power supply. If anything, every generation of processor requires more power than the previous one. Not to mention 3D accelerators, CD/DVD burners, home RAIDs and who knows what else on the horizon will continue to increase power draw because performance, not power efficiency drives the market.
One last thought. You talk about the environmental impact of paper production. Have you ever read up on what it takes to build a computer? It requires a number of toxic processes that are extremely harmful to the environment - far more so than sustainable foresting/recycled paper production requires. But do not take my word for it, read about it here: http://www.svtc.org/hightech_prod/
The Doctor is Out... (Enjoying the warm weather)
Nautilus does this to an extent...
Check out the archives here.
This comic in particular seems to hit on the salient issues.
:wq
Please, learn the proper English plural of the word 'virus.'
There's no need to be making up words in hopes of sounding smarter. You only end up looking silly.
"Boss! Da plane, da plane!"
Sorry, had to!
:-p
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Any idea how messy my desk will look with a single issue of Slashdot Daily opened on it?
"have a secretary at the company headquarters type up a schedule every week, setting out what train was travelling in what direction at what time, because in the mid-nineteenth century collisions were a terrible problem. Then the secretary would make ten carbon copies of that schedule..."
Uh.. excuse me? Carbon copies are made at the same time the typing is done. Someone who wrote about carbon copies did not know that? (Youngsters: carbon copies are made by putting thin sheets of black carbon paper between blank pages in the typewriter. When a letter is typed, the black carbon is squished on to the page underneath, so the copies under the original are made at the same time.)
MacOS still requires you to put computer files on the computer's hard drive, right? Sounds aweful to me.
Seriously, though, I would love to hear you name one good reason to put any data file outside of ~user.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman