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What Is Holding Back the Paperless Office?
Drethon writes "CNN has an article (are we up to the millionth article on this topic?) asking if the paperless office has arrived. This got me wondering, what are the main things holding back the paperless office? Just off the top of my head, the main thing keeping me printing out documents is the ability to spread a dozen pages of a document under review out on my table and marking it up by hand. PDF and Word markups are not too bad but they still lack the ability to spread many pages out to look over at the same time and could be improved to make markup a bit less restrictive. I do find myself printing out less with the use of dual monitors to have source documents and work under progress up at the same time, perhaps something like Microsoft's tabletop computer used as a desk will let me have at least a paperless desk. I know there are other reasons why offices are not becoming paperless. What are your reasons?"
Humans... We like to have a piece of paper in our hands, we can easily hand it to a coworker, we can scribble on it to take notes. I know it sounds oldskool, but for many tasks, a piece of paper is just superior. Sure, most of it is for temporary use, but paper isn't going anywhere. For many people reading from screen just isn't anywhere as comfortable as reading from paper. (That's why we still buy real books!)
People who bought the "paperless office" fad years ago were living in a dreamland.
Also, one thing to keep in mind. I have worked on large scale "scan documents from archives and the commit to big-ass proprietary content management systems". The conversion was extremely expensive, and the maintenance even more so. After all, you now needed expensive content manager Consultants, and competent DBAs (who have to be on call). For the paper version, you just needed one or two archivars. Just having tons and tons of paper sitting in a warehouse was was much cheaper, I heard later. These were Police documents, and they scanned in B&W... Photos were as such became unusable... I sure hope they'll keep the originals. I wonder who ever in his right mind approved that project.
Well... that was easy.
The essential utility of paper. We won't stop using paper until the last tree has been ground into pulp and pressed out into a sheet.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You still have allot more freedom with a paper document. Our brains are just geared to use tools in the actual world rather than virtual objects. There's no real program that emulates all the freedoms you get form handling a physical tool. we are from the apes remember :P
~don't feel threatened by my pineal~
Technology:
I have yet to find anything that can replace the flexibility of a notepad..
Some stuff comes close (or even surpasses) in specific areas, but for general day to day stuff like taking notes at a meeting or scribbling out something to argue a point.. nah
People:
There are still people.. lots of them.. who will print out emails to read them. No technology will fix this.
Sometimes when working on some algorithmical or mathematical problem, I draw stuff on paper to visualize the problem better and find the solution. Drawing on a computer screen will never replace drawing with a pen on paper for that purpose for me.
> the main thing keeping me printing out documents is the ability to spread a dozen pages of a document under review out on my table and marking it up by hand.
So, in short, the paperless office is waiting on bigger displays. Sounds about right to me...
It's kinda like wiping or eating with your other hand. For our office, it boils down to comfort. We spend our entire lives reading books, flipping through newspapers, preparing reports and homework, signing contracts, etc., etc., etc. We are conditioned to have something tangible in our hands. So, when it comes to reading a 50-page document on an LCD screen, it feels unnatural. We can do it if we had to, but our brain simply feels awkward accepting it.
When Word or Acrobat allows me to draw 3D boxes and other geometric shapes in the margins of docs, then we'll talk.
Office printers. It's just too easy to prepare a document and hit 'print'. It's also incredibly easy to produce larger quantities with the good old photocopier. In short, while the human preference for paper has not diminished to any great degree, the ease of producing paper documents in large quantities has increased dramatically.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
I've never had my desk crash, losing all pieces of paper on it. Contrast that to Windows.
When push comes to shove, I can always get a paper form to the person that needs it. Contrast that to relying on an Exchange server.
When a form needs authorization, having the right person sign it with a pen always works. Contrast that to trying to get digital signatures to work.
A lot of the paper in our office relates to invoice and billing, everyone wants everything on headed paper. It would be nice if there were a set of open standards for documents like this, with an acceptable way to easily digitally sign and verify documents for authenticity, and some kind of indexing tool to allow prompt searches.
Also like Drethon says, being able to print out a bunch of pages and spread them around is awesome, especially for hand outs at meetings, CVs when interviewing people, etc etc. Perhaps one of these super magic touch screen lcd tables that are in some labs at the moment could help with that one day ..
Also I just like writing things down on a notepad, rather than in to a computer!
If you work in health care, at a law office, in insurance, in a financial institution or virtually anything else heavily regulated by the government, you must keep paper copies of most of your stuff. You just can't have a paperless office in those situations.
I work in an office with 200+ cubes. We have all the latest office productivity tools. 99% of the employees have 10-30 yellow stickys stuck all over their desk for reminders. People seem somehow amazed and awestruck by my clean and streamlined desk that is clutter free and yellow sticky free. Sometimes people are even brave enough to ask "how do you do it? How do you work without... stickys??!!". I tell them about this technological miracle that was recently invented (years ago) called Outlook. Features include calendar with reminders and even... a task list! Amazed... my coworkers usually run back to their desk to place another yellow sticky on top of a recently expiring yellow sticky, that says "reminder, learn about outlook tool". I feel like I'm surrounded by spear-chuckers
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
Ask anyone that works in the medical industry.
It's just so hard to trust digital documents for life-long recording purposes like medical records. Thus, each time something is documented, two copies of it are made, perhaps one digital and one physical, and then copies of each of those are made, and then all are stored separately.
Unless everything in your business is throw-away, or you have all sorts of faith in your backup methods, it's the most stable method of retaining documents over a lengthy period.
Short of a fire, flood, or shredding, the documents in the filing cabinet aren't going anywhere. Electromagnetic data storage is the devil's tool!
Paper offers the chance to get up and walk around while reading or the chance to go to another part of the office to write.
Play Command HQ online
I work in an architecture/engineering office. Each department has its engineers/architects and its CAD technicians/designers. Our typical workflow has the engineer, ie me, quickly drawing out what I want on a blank plan, and the CAD guys make it happen so I can move on to other things. If I was going to draw what I wanted in the computer anyway, why do we need CAD guys? (hint: they are less expensive per hour, to be cynical. But that lets us get more work done overall).
I know there are other reasons why offices are not becoming paperless. What are your reasons?
I don't use paper at my home office. I have a printer for rare occasions, like when I want to print a backup set of driving directions for a long trip (the primary set being the GPS.) Some say they don't trust Windows (or any other OS, I guess) with their data. That's what backups are for. When was the last time you did a backup of all your papers, by the way? Papers are easy to lose and nearly impossible to find when you need them.
I have a scanner next to me, if I have a paper (like a manual on something I bought) I scan it and save. The paper manual may then be recycled. Less stuff to lay around and produce dust.
Even when I worked at a larger company (last year) the office was mostly paperless. All communication was done through email and IM and phone. I wasn't involved with code reviews, but meetings were done without papers - using a projector connected to presenter's notebook. The only paper I handled there was time cards, and that was only because of certain accounting regulations (it must be a physical document with a signature.)
when was the last time you took a computer monitor and folded it up and stuffed it in to an envelope, or in your pocket?
also a pen/pencil & paper does not require a battery / electricity
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I've had flatbed scanners for a long time, auto-feeding, etc. Way back, scanning was very manual and OCR took a Really Long Time. That was a turnoff for many years.
These days, there are really good scanners out there (we just picked up a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1400) and the OCR isn't too painful on a modern box. The ScanSnap is color and double-sided with a large ADF - and blazing fast. I cannot picture too many improvements, except maybe a scanner that would unfold paper and remove staples... but the sticking point is still document management and access.
We're part of the way there. The largest remaining problems are software and people.
The upside? A banker's box of papers can be consolidated onto a quarter of a DVD - all searchable. I want that. :-)
primarily because a paper-based process is tremendously wasteful, expensive, and it cannot take advantage of many efficiencies of keeping documents in the digital domain. For our Boston office alone, we spend tens of thousands of dollars each year on paper, ink, and printer/photocopier maintenance.
What it mostly comes down to for us is screen real-estate; the ability to work from multiple documents at once is essential. We are piloting some very large monitors now (24"+), and the things we're discovering were somewhat unexpected from the IT staff's perspective. Most people, but especially older workers, intensely dislike the large screens.
Their complaints are along the lines of "it's too big" and "sensory overload". It seems that, with their previous displays, which were 15" LCDs, people could tuck their monitor away, and use the computer to augment their work. People universally liked moving from 15" CRTs to 15" LCDs because it made the computer even less obtrusive. However, a shift to a digital workflow is really quite a change, and the large screen reinforces that. It immediately confronts people with the fact that they really have to work on the computer now. Younger employees seem very eager to do this, but older employees, some of whom have worked with a paper process for 20+ years, really do not like this idea at all, and have even recently made childish proclamations like "I reserve the right to print something anytime I want!"
My sense is that this attitude will eventually pass, but it may be a generational thing. As younger employees move into more senior positions, we'll probably see paper go away. Obviously, I'm generalizing here, because some older employees, especially our graphic designers, LOVE the big screens. Their process has been entirely computer based for a long time already. Given that most of the actual work is done by younger employees, we may find ourselves giving the less senior people big screens, and let the more senior people keep what they have. They spend most of their time in meetings anyhow.
"A paperless office is as useful as a paperless toilet. Some things would be impractical..."
OK, it's not that old a saying, but it's valid in a number of ways.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
(see subject)
Back in the 80s, I remember someone saying that a paperless office would be about as useful as the paperless toilet.
I'm not sure why I feel that this is true. But I'm hoping this discussion will provide insight.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
A whole desk computer is what you need, with easy ways of sending someone a document.
Imagine if you had a meeting room and the whole desk was a computer, but you could effectively bring your own computer display over to the desk? No need to bring your laptop, no need to bring a notepad with you.
Ok, we will need to move away from WIMP to make this possible perhaps?
What's holding down the paperless Office? The answer is mainly: you. I've been working at my IT job for a few years. Almost if not all of my communication is by mail, phone or coffee machine. I normally do not read anything offline, and if I write anything down it's because I do the exercise to remember. Only top priority notes are kept, and they are directly typed into a document on the server.
I've recently had to host a meeting with 20 persons and I just used a laptop and a projector, The persons hosting the meeting before gave everybody a lot of paper (which 90 percent won't even read because they are not directly involved). I just gave them one double sided page so they could scribble some notes next to the items on the agenda.
I absolutely hate paper when I'm at work. Office documents need versions, need to be able to be pushed around, deleted and changed. You must be able to search through them quickly. Novels are much better in a book, but at work, I'll would prefer digital versions every time (even though paper even there certainly has its advantages).
Of course I do have double screens at work, something every IT person should have - if only to minimize costs.
Paper of course.
Humans... We like to have a piece of paper in our hands, we can easily hand it to a coworker, we can scribble on it to take notes. I know it sounds oldskool, but for many tasks, a piece of paper is just superior.
For a lot of my tasks, electronic records are better because you can attach metadata to documents to more easily search, sort and drive workflow. This then makes my tasks easier, quicker and less error-prone.
I feel like this is more of an issue with people not understanding what metadata is and what it can do for them rather than an issue of people liking paper.
... that deliver 20,000 lb of paper to my workplace every few weeks or so. And the 1 printer for every 5 workers ratio is not getting any better.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
It seems to me that no matter how much I spell and grammar check the crap out of something on my screen, as soon as I read hard copy I find mistooks.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
Uhm...the abundance of cheap laser printers? (And I would rather see greater proliferation of cheaper e-ink devices.)
Ezekiel 23:20
I find myself printing out less since I got an e-reader, but it's still just for certain documents. Temporary stuff, mostly. If I could doodle and use colour that might cut it down some more. I don't think screen size makes a lot of difference for me, but it might for some people. You can't pass round electronic documents as easily, but what if someone built an e-reader that allowed you to dock with other readers and transfer files between them? That would change things (provided everyone in the office has compatible machines).
90/10 rule - we're most of the way there, to get that last 10% will require a massive organizational and technological shift. Who cares, just recycle.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Working in IT, I hate fax machines. They're archaic technology, long sense replaced, but try and argue the point to an employee who believes they are the only HIPAA compliant way to sent information to another doctors office. Uhhg. I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone print something out to shove it in a fax machine and then shred it, and yes, there's a digital fax printer setup on the network and they know how to use it. Stubborn employees and the lack of management to enforce them to migrate to better technology.
Paperless office is probably never going to happen; paper is just too convenient.
The problem trying to be solved isn't lots of paper though, it's the environmental effects of printing and throwing away lots of paper.
There are currently some printers out there that handle special paper that can be erased. With a decade of R&D more we could have affordable, erasable paper and pens and markers to go along with that paper.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
What is holding back the paperless office? Late adopters e.g. people who still want to see paper copies of things. This often corresponds to age, but lets not go there...
...Staples? ;)
People print out documents because, for one, they want to view non-continuous pages. A monitor that could show, say 6 full pages might do the trick.
Another reason is to have a permanent copy; people all have a story where documents were lost due to some data-related problem.
Finally, some people want to mark up pages. Although there are ways to do that on a computer, vendor proprietary formats, cost of applications, and generally not really working as well as people want make print and the pencil by far the easiest solution.
Me and my printers. Muhahahahahah!!! Muhahahahaah!!! Mu
Eh, fuck it.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Some of the reasons I still use paper:
Speaking for myself... nothing. I haven't printed anything either at the office or at home for at least five years. Not out of any technophile or tree-hugging principles; I just haven't felt the need.
Damn those dinosaurs!
There are some things that paper has that digital copies can never replace.
Many people feel that some pieces of sensitive information are safer on a piece of paper in a locked desk than they are on a drive on your network.
The feel of assurance one gets from a physical, actual, handwritten signature (sad to say but even a generic 'rubber stamped' signature has a better "feel" to it than receiving a generic pdf form regardless of what new digital cert/signature accompanies the pdf.)
If you graduated from a nice college, how would you feel if they just emailed you a PDF of your diploma? It wouldn't 'feel' the same printing it out and hanging it on the wall, for whatever reason. (I'd say it goes deeper than that, though. 1s and 0s aren't directly tangible in and of themselves. Since they are so easy to reproduce copies of them, there really isn't the same type of sentimental value. If you 'lost' a PDF book your girlfriend gave you, for example, you could redownload the exact same copy of the file over again-- and you would experience no sense of loss... However, if your girlfriend bought you a physical copy of the book, and you lost it, even if you went to the store and repurchased an exact same copy of the same printing of the same book-- it wouldn't be the same 'book'. There is something empty about the 1's and 0's, and, though I love the possibilities that technology makes available to us, I hope that never changes.)
Physical placement of actual papers registers in the mind. If you have a collage of papers above your desk with various phone numbers, IPs, or whatever, your mind usually connects with that easier than 'what file/folder is that in?', and it's easier to look up than it is to click through multiple folders. (It's less steps to look up, than it is to sift through).
I think that paper and digital copies compliment eachother. They each have certain advantages over the other, but they can never fully replace one another.
What I need is a nice, cheap, rugged and handy document reader.
Seriously, the number one reason I print documents is because I want to review them while I go to the loo, or because I want to grab something to eat and I'll read it while I wait or because I want to take the doc home and maybe read it while I ride the bus.
Basically it boils down to something:
Basically, stick some memory, an ARM processor, a PDF decoder and a screen. In fact, forget about most of the memory, just some RAM and a SD connector as an interface, user pays for the memory card.
GPG 0x1B479C78
Paper is incredibly cheap...
At ~1 cent per page, how many reams of paper would it take to pay off a single tablet/eBook reader for a single person?
Answer: "Too many"
Tablets, so far, have been far too geared for the high end... Luxury devices. Meanwhile, the essentially free "Personal Organizers" that were flying off the shelves close to 10 years ago now, had everything needed, just in too small dimensions...
In short, once someone sells a 7" display, with decent pen-input, basic wireless, and a stupid-simple UI, for perhaps $25, then you'll see the last stronghold of paper fall away.
Until then, it will continue to be a trade-off... Is e-mailing this report okay, or will it need to be referenced in the next meeting, or by someone as they're walking around? Often, it's cost more to take the time to figure that out, than the cost of continuing to print it...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
For fuck's sake, can you e-ink advocates finally give us something we can actually use, or maybe just shut your mouths until there's a usable implementation available?
Literally every year since the 1970s I've had to endure one of you guys saying, "E-ink will be available next year!" First that "next year" was 1973, then it was eventually 1997, and now it's apparently 2011.
No, there won't be usable e-ink displays next year. All we'll get is a shitty iPad.
1) Limited display surfaces. Computers tend to treat all displays as if they need realtime updates. An HDTV large-screen desk display that updates slowly can handle vast display requirements without taxing computer hardware, which is cheap anyway. 2) Paper. Incoming paper still has to be dealt with. Scanning does not imply OCR, does not imply search.
I mean, so as to be completely unusable. I have books that are torn, missing spines, water damaged, defaced, and they still work. With no other hardware. Even during a power cut, or on the beach, and without any kind of hardware, and no language problems even after centuries. Paper is just superior technology.
Paper allows markup, and so does papyrus. Clay tablets do as well, until they are dry or fired in a kiln.
Paperless "documents" can be made to support markup. Ted Nelson was talking about it in the 1960s. It's his inability to ship product (like Babbage before him) that kept his vision from being popularized.
When TBL got around to building the first web servers, and there arose a need for formatting, the term HTML got picked. The world was done a great disservice by the term HTML, which doesn't allow markup of text, let alone hypertext.
HTML has effectively banned discussion of old school markup, because for a large portion of cases, people didn't really need markup, they just wanted formatting, so they went along with the term. Anyone who wanted old school markup just had to lump it, because the programmers didn't think it necessary, and thus the code to implement it never happened.
It's the effective banning of the concept because everyone now thinks exclusively as formatting internal to original source material that makes it almost impossible to even discuss adding markup on top of existing hypertext by a second or more parties.
We need markup. The old school kind, and its this deficiency that makes paper so bloody useful even now.
Google hates linguistic forking, and actively suppresses it by it's very nature. This means HTML will never be about markup, and we'll have to invent some new way of talking about it.
So here we are, 40 years after Ted Nelson, and we still use paper when we need markup.
Quality procedures force those in my office to keep a record of their hand markups. We need to be able to document all of the checks that took place to get a document out the door...hand marked, initialed, and dated. Then, when we kick something up for approval to go out the door, I need to print out fresh copy. Project managers also like their own hard copies to look at. Basically, although I may not have a problem looking at documents on my computer, those responsible for the overall project do.
The suits. AKA the useless eaters.
Surprised it took this long for someone to state the obvious. Office Depot, Staples, etc do not want the Paperless Office, considering selling paper is one of the primary things they do. They'll do anything and everything to ensure that almost every technology product you use utilizes paper in some fashion.
The problems is those pesky irl humans. They want irl things by default.
Technically there's no need for 90% of all paper usage. But making
the change costs alot of training and trail and error. (Same problem that
prevent the world from swittching up to Linux)
However, for those that begin the change now, will get the rewards earlier.
And once the switch to paper-less (and/or all Linux) has been made, there's
no need to ever going back.
Try small scale, work out the bugs. Write down the costs and savings, people
love it when change is converted to a measurement they understand, money.
Try bigger scale only when the small scale has been properly mapped. Once
a tiny snowball begins rolling, it's hard for the backward people to stop it.
...
The only thing that is stopping our office, is backup. Digital backup is a joke. Over the years I've tried many types of backups formats. .TXT, .RTF, HTML. Those three are the most reliable, and readable. But what about video? There's about 5 formats I can think of off the top of my head. Pictures? Well unless it's .TIFF then you run the risk of data corruption caused by the compression. Sound is the same way. I found the majority of data corruption was done on compressed files.
THEN comes the problem of media. How do you store huge amounts of data? Use to be tape, but they broke, or the magnetic was damageable, AND how do you read such?. Optical? Like tape, they didn't keep up with the storage. The biggest DVDs are 8.x gigs. Backing up 500gs of storage would take, around 63 DVDs. The only possible way is with external harddrives. But then, your talking magnetic backup, which runs the risk of data corruption.
The only sure method of backup is printing them on paper. True, you could have a fire, or flood. But look at books and printed material. They last 1,000s of years. In our office. We have to keep backup, and paper is the only reliable method. We print out everything important, including e-mails.
Until the 2 problems of data storage is solved. Media, and format, the 'paperless office' is a joke.
We keep every order and receiving voucher and invoice that comes through the office. Why? RELIABILITY and FLEXIBILITY.
1. Flexibility is obvious. You can write anything on paper. Try scratching something out in a word processor, and writing in the margins. It CAN be done, but it's a royal PITA.
2. Reliability is the big kicker. There's more to reliability than just keeping good backups. There's also the reliance on the technology to get to those electronic documents. It's just not good enough for me to base my entire business on it. The second that anybody has a technical problem, it's lost time and money. There are no technical problems with paper.
Paper is really, really cheap, really easy, and really dependable. I won't be getting rid of paper any time soon. In fact, I need to go fax something...
I don't respond to AC's.
Maybe the paperless office has not arrived yet but at least in my domain (software engineering), there has been a huge change in the last 3-5 years : most of the documents are exchanged with customers/partners in electronic form and the reference version is somewhere on server (most of the times on a simple file server, sometimes in a document management system). Only a few documents remain in paper form (contracts, orders, etc...), but they are quickly scanned so that we only use the electronic version in day-to-day use (while the paper version is archived).
Yes, there is still a lot of paper around, but it is mostly used for personal usage, and can simply be thrown away once a project is over.
First: Education, normal people don't know how to use electronic devices (computers, card readers, mouses, touchable screens, barcodes, etc.) in general. We have been teached to use paper from child and we are teached from fools how to use computers.
Second: Money, using paper documents are cheaper than electronic documents, not for the support but because the manipulation.
I'm a municipal engineer. The normal sheet I work with the a ARCH-D (24x36") but last week I plotted a 9-metre long roll so I could review the road profile of a road I am rebuilding. We use large dual computer screens for our CAD work, but even then they are too small to see the big picture all at once.
It's amazing how much paper our office goes though. But until we get big wall sized displays that is the way it is going to be.
Paper is the only way to make sure that your ass is covered, without having to worry about it being compromised in storage. Anything stored on a computer can be accessed by a skilled person, at which point it can be destroyed, altered or altered and moved to someplace you no longer control.
Paper can be taken to any bank or lawyers office to be permanently stored with a record of all accesses, which ratchets up the level of difficulty for anyone wanting to destroy or change it.
I'll go paperless when I get a CRT that supports 3 or 4 8 1/2x 11 documents at one time, at 8 1/2x 11 with 300+ dpi resolution, and lets me take notes on any document format, in any way I see fit, highlighter, drawing lines, whatever.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, you're always just a year awaaaaaay ...
It's the fact that a majority of people are computer illiterate and are afraid to be 100% dependent on IT to recover their documents. It is basically the old people, those who are here commenting on how great paper is, that make paper necessary. They are afraid of losing control, because all they know is paper.
Lets not dance around the fundamental issue. The Utopian ideal of a paperless office will never materialize until we can agree on a universal data standard. With paper, we can still read the records of the Roman Empire, Ancient China and Ancient Egypt. Even if today's modern languages fall to extinction a thousand years from now, we can still recover the paper based history. Any electronic records would be lost. I have 8 inch and 5 1/4 floppy discs from a CP/M Z80 S100 system I used back in the early eighties that are now essentially unreadable (fortunately I have paper print outs!). Unless we have a universal standard, and get one soon, the "computer revolution" era will be a black hole to future generations. On the other hand, maybe we don't want future generations to study the conversation on slashdot.....
At the college where I work, the primary problem with going paperless is archives. There is just no digital solution that can match the price and longevity of paper, so while all our records are digital, we also make printouts of them as an analog backup to last indefinitely.
Also, when writing something that needs to be proofread, we've found that we can usually catch more errors by reading a printout than reading on screen.
I work in the print industry, you insensitive clod!
I implemented a simple electronic filing system for a group and found that signatures are the most difficult piece to replace. Most people expect ink stained paper for certain documents and although there exists viable technical replacements, only those who understand those techniques feel comfortable with them.
Hard to believe, but when being consulted by another group wanting to implement a system like the one I did, their solution for a "digital signature" was to overlay a scanned image of the person's signature on the document as the one and only method of signing the document. This came from the group (in a gov. agency) responsible for implementing the electronic filing system. Also, at least locally, proper digital signatures haven't been tested in court and as a result, the decision makers aren't comfortable with them.
It seems clear to me at this point that ignorance is the biggest obstacle to using digital sigs. A major cultural change is required to make this happen and it has to be made as easy as possible. I think one approach that may be feasible is to associate a signing key with a physical object. This may be as simple as putting a signing key on a USB drive as it may be easier to convey the importance of protecting the key and the consequences of someone else acquiring it.
Trust - as in "we trust that a piece of paper hasn't changed since it was printed"
Where things only exist in a database, there is no assurance that they haven't been changed.
An example would be climate data. Twenty years ago, almost all climate scientists showed the Medieval Warm Period in their temperature vs. time graphs. These days, the same scientists show a flat line where the MWP used to be. Their paper publications clearly demonstrate that they have changed their tune. Their web sites give no clue that there was a change.
What is my point? Paper makes it harder for people to change history.
A lot of people are saying that human nature is the problem, but I think it's that combined with technological limitations.
First, the human nature factor is getting to be less and less of an issue. Younger people in the workforce don't seem to care about permanent records not being printed, and the number of filing cabinets in most offices has gone way down. The human "need" for having a piece of paper in-hand has decreased, but people are (understandably) worried about some of the technology related issues:
I'd say given one more generation and some major improvements, we could get rid of most printed documents. Until then, HP is still going to rake in the bucks on printers and toner. We already have way less paper floating around - the legal and medical professions are the only ones still "innovating" in the paper filing arena. Electronic bank statements, loan payments, and all that stuff means a whole lot less paper being mailed from place to place.
In my own office, I've found that unless I have at least as much screen real estate as I do desk (I currently have more screen than desk in front of me if you subtract the space needed for the keyboard, mouse and coffee cup ;) I HAVE to print out stuff to allow me to refer to it as I work on the screen.
I have 4 16x9 aspect monitors on my workstation and rarely find I need more - but have room for 2 more monitors on the current cards and room for one more dual-head card in the box (4 PCI-X16 slots)
The printer only gets used for stuff I have to take with me because my cell phone is only 1/4 VGA
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
Can I have a car analogy?
"Markup" is not about making notes in the margins. That's annotation. Markup is about marking up a manuscript with typesetting and formating instructions.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Just off the top of my head, the main thing keeping me printing out documents is the ability to spread a dozen pages of a document under review out on my table and marking it up by hand.
Sounds like you need twelve or so iPads to digitize your workflow. You could have twelve digital documents open at the same time, and they could move around in 3D space.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/?tid=8501&ttype=2
Paper has "affordances" that computer systems cannot duplicate. You can spread a bunch of paper documents out for reference while you're creating a new document. You can mark it up by hand, and then pass it on, with the markup clearly identifiable as yours. You can hand the "customer file" to another account rep, and the physical transfer serves as a notification to others that custody has changed., etc.etc.etc.
Let's not forget things like rapidly shuffling through pages, sticking your fingers in as temporary bookmarks, etc.
I just read your comment on a Kindle DX.
And, the iPad doesn't have an e-ink display. It's powered by revolutionary magic, or as described from internal Apple memos, the never-ending bank accounts of yuppie trustafarians.
There is no easy way yet to share the info with everyone in a way that allows them to write notes alongside the information in a cheap and dead easy way.
Give people an e-ink solution that can be distributed to everyone instantly and allow them to write notes on top and paper will start going away.
In an ideal world you could even have e-ink clients on a noteboard that get updates from a server so info can be passed to all employees without needing, for example, 10,000 iPad-like devices for people who don't really need them 99.99% of the time.
What's holding back the paperless office? Flipping FAX MACHINES. I work for a multi-billion dollar international bank and if faxes stop working there is no end to the screaming and whining. Kinda sad that in the 21st Century banking is still done using technology from 1994.
I have signed all of 2 pieces of work related paper since starting work ~3 years ago.
Wait, make that 3. I had to sketch out how I wanted my desk + bookcase arranged when moving buildings.
I most often use the work printer for printing out maps of places I am going after work.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I work in the art department of a marketing agency, and sit in Photoshop and Illustrator all day. Sometimes, it just pays off to run a quick print of your work and look at it on paper. It can give a better idea of what the end user will see, and can also give a different perspective on my work, visually, in that it helps give a better birds' eye view of an ad or web page I'm working on.
When problems like this:
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/10/03/21/0849241/Need-Help-Salvaging-Data-From-an-Old-Xenix-System?art_pos=8
Don't exist anymore.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
- the printed disclaimers, safety warnings and licence documentation.
Vik :v)
I tried the paperless office with my old company. And the problem is, that other companies don’t accept your digital signatures (even if they are official ones issued by the state), and that your clients won’t buy a expensive device and get a digital signature, just so they can make valid digital contracts with you.
Other than that, everything works. You scan every piece of paper you get in the mail (if it’s not spam), or remove your mailbox right away. And everything else happens via e-mail. Many companies already send you their invoices via e-mail anyway.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I have worked on large scale "scan documents from archives and the commit to big-ass proprietary content management systems". The conversion was extremely expensive, and the maintenance even more so
You cannot point to bad implementations of technology to prove that the technology itself is bad. Digital documents are slowly displacing paper, and at one of my client's offices I have made the switch already.
All documents, faxed or mailed in, get turned into OCR PDFs, and then the paper recycled. The Fujitsu doublesided ADF scanner is programmed to dump a basic timestamped PDF into a single folder with the push of a single button. The massive inbox can be processed by multiple people, and they don't even have to be in the office. Documents are stamped Received or Reviewed with the user's name, along with a timestamp. (This is a default feature of Adobe Acrobat Pro that came with the scanner.) Documents are then filed under the vendors name on a fileserver, and of course, the fileserver is backed up over the net, so even if the whole place burns down, there are complete copies of all documents. They run about 60kb a page. Users can also choose a more detailed scan if it's important.
Yearly filing no longer happens. Paid documents are stamped digitally. Temporary workers could be hired to telecommute, but the accountant now puts in about a third time less since he's not always pulling up and refiling physical sheets of paper, or scanning them in to e-mail internally. Virtually every document can be located within seconds and reviewed.
There's rarely a time when the format of a document trumps the data it carries. For larger organizations, I think it would be even more efficient to digitize the data immediately into a database, and then purely as a backup, have access to the PDF.
My department has a few people who insist on using paper when the paperless equivalent would be significantly less work. I've set up simple online form systems that replace a lot of this paper functionality for the vast majority of my co-workers; but a couple people are stuck on paper, even though it ends up making that particular process (registering items with our equipment inventory, for example) take more steps involving more people.
It continues to happen because the people insisting on sticking with "the old way" are all senior, and there's no political will to force them to change. I'm not young - I'm in my late 40s - but I find it ridiculous how some older people just refuse to even try something new that requires them to briefly step out of their comfort zone. What's really odd is we have some other situations - notably payroll - where we've managed to force the issue, and they all say the online version is so much better than their old way of doing things; but somehow in their brains it still doesn't occur to them that maybe, if they'd just try some of the other new systems, they might find those work better for them as well!
#DeleteChrome
In my office, there are about a hundred employees and we rely on three printers which mostly sit idle. As a software development company, most of the things we are working on are digital to start with. I routinely go months without handling a piece of paper at work.
At home, there are still one or two things that come as paper mail, usually financial in nature. That gets scanned and shredded unless I'm required to keep it by law - tax documents for example. I have a three or four inch thick stack of legal and financial papers in my safe and that's all the paper in my life.
The paperless office is rare, perhaps, but quite possible.
BRENT ROCKWOOD, EST'd 1975
Well, almost paperless. I gradually stopped using printouts and paper note pads when I got a second monitor at work. I just don't seem to need to have the specs on paper, I just need to be able to glance at them while still leaving my workspace open, and having a searchable document is just more convenient than a binder with paper. Ever so occasionally I get a piece of paper to draw a quick design on, for things that are too small to warrant making a proper design but take too long to keep in the back of your head. I type so much faster than I write that using paper for notes doesn't make any sense at all.
The only things I still need to print out are those that for whatever reason need a signature or can only be faxed.
It may be obvious, but there isn't really a technical barrier here on the navigation capability (as opposed to the UI and possibly implementation in some programs). In most decent document reading programs, it's trivial to set lots bookmarks and flip back and forth between pages much more easily than you can with paper.
On top of that, there's often fast domain-specific navigation (e.g. jumping from chapter to chapter, drilling through function calls in code, grabbing references, skipping to and from the index), searching, and all kinds of other great reading aids.
And yet I still find people printing out documents that we're reviewing coming by and saying "here, I printed out a copy for everyone" and dropping a copy "helpfully" on my desk--which I hate, because I'm never going to look at it and that paper is wasted (sure, it's still got the back for scratch paper, but it's still somewhat wasted).
This leads me to think there are a few major problems:
1. Program user interfaces aren't exposing bookmark functionality enough--this is a major time saver, and one of the prime reasons I hear people saying they print stuff out is so they can flip between 2 or 3 things quickly when that should absolutely be a reason to prefer reading online.
2. People aren't learning their tools effectively; for those who are often using a particular document reader as part of the job, it's worth putting a little effort into learning how it can help you.
3. As the OP notes, markup can be restrictive--this is especially true for domain-specific markup (e.g. the common editor's symbols like squiggly underlines, paragraph begin/move, arrows running from here to there, etc). This is partially because those markups were designed for a different medium, and partially because many apps don't make a strong effort to support flexible markup
4. People don't like computer monitors for some reason. I think this is sometimes true, but often overstated--a lot of people make this claim when the real problem lies elsewhere. For those who really have trouble with modern screens, it's a tough problem though perhaps OLEDs, e-ink style displays, or some other advance will eventually offer a solution
But I think an equally large problem is simple habit. People are used to flipping through paper, to the point that they even assume other people feel the same way and "helpfully" print everything out even for those who would much rather have it online. And it happens in all kinds of domains: Post-it notes get stuck to my monitor when an email would've been easier for both of us, faxes of photos get sent instead of just attaching the image or sending a link to it, etc.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Microcrap.
Go ahead. Mod me down.
Yours In Astrakhan,
Kilgore Trout
Literally every year since the 1970s I've had to endure one of you guys saying, "E-ink will be available next year!"
The E-ink guys are just waiting for the year of the Linux desktop. Don't worry, though, that's next year!
All we'll get is a shitty iPad.
You mean a bloody iPad. Toilet paper gets shitty, pads get bloody.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I only deal with paper when I need to sign something - which usually means that I receive a PDF by email, print it out, sign the paper, scan it, and email the scan back. If we could only get a widely accepted system for digital signatures I wouldn't need to keep doing this ridiculous ritual, or deal with paper at all.
On the other hand, my handwriting looks like I'm a ten-year old, as I don't write anything by hand more than once or twice a month, and then it's just short notes. I'm going back to school next year, and the prospect of writing long texts by hand for exams etc. is really worrying me - the lack of efficient editing facilities and the slow pace of my writing is quite certain to have an adverse effect on the quality of my work.
... is buried in an in-basket somewhere.
Have gnu, will travel.
I often print things out so that I can read them on the run. A decent e-reader would eliminate that need entirely, but tragically no one makes one yet. I have high hopes that this will be fixed sometime this year or next. That's not the only obstacle to a paperless office, but that's by far the #1 paper consumer for me.
Umm ... you may wish to be aware that "spear-chucker" is most commonly used (here in the midwestern U.S., at least) as a racial slur.
In the same way we try to divide the business logic layer from the presentation layer in systems design, when I'm drawing pictures on paper to explain things to someone, I want to get my point across (the business logic) without worrying what it looks like. If I try to do it on Powerpoint, I worry about colours, positioning and getting the presentation right first time rather than just letting the logic flow.
A computer screen and a drawing tool will never beat a bit of A3 paper and the ability to scribble and talk around it while people you work with can do the same..
--- Band: Joey Ultra
If a fellow developer has written a 500+ line function that I need to maintain, I might print it out, stick the pages together, hang said function on the wall and use a marker to identify functional blocks in there. I find this helps a lot in understanding/cleaning up their code, especially when they nest IF statements and have the ELSE to an IF five pages later. I find it very impractical to work with such code on the limited size of a screen. Anyone know of a good multi-column code editor that can show 2 or 3 pages of code side by side? With our widescreen monitors nowadays, why not benefit that extra width?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Where I work the biggest holdup is that the company is run by old people who are incapable of understanding technology. Every email must be printed and filed multiple times. (one file for the recipient, one file for the sender, more files if there are CC's) and every website of our customers and competitors is printed in completion and filed. Yes, we actually do this.
So, we have two systems. One that is mostly paperless so that those of us working can quickly access information. The other system relies on a warehouse for storing documents (mostly printed emails and webpages) and a whole staff of people who only file and retrieve them.
We currently print and file over 200,000 sheets of paper annually.
We are a small company with 20 employees, but 1/3rd of our costs comes from moving and storing paper to satisfy the people in charge.
Even the most simple tasks require moving paper around. Let's say a sales lead comes in through our website. Management prints several copies of the email, and then has it delivered to sales. Sales types out a reply, and before sending it, prints a copy and then it is delivered back to management where it is approved, and then a message sent back to sales on any changes and finally the printed communications are filed. Eliminating any of these steps is "eliminating the paper trail" and any digital alternative does not work because it eliminates paper
As the "IT guy" I have tried everything to get them to stop using so much paper. Even staging a fake fire, to try and scare them into not relying on paper for storing all their information. (Failed, they started sending copies of more important documents to different locations to minimize risk.)
Needless to say, we are losing money and I don't expect to have this job for much longer.
I used to print out HUGE amounts of paper for reference manuals, emails, technical documentation, meeting notes and proceedings etc., etc. Not so anyymore. I do not exactly know why, but somehow I'm now totally content with reading things on the screen. Probably has to do with wider screens or better tools for annotation and sharing. Or my job has somewhat changed and the need of having several pages side by side has dimished. I honestly do not know.
I find I can't work on one screen now and even two is pushing it. But a lot of managers see big multiscreen setups as a status thing. The effect being that paper allows more resolution and flexibiliity over a single cheap a$$ 17-19" LCDs.
Until the bean counters and pointy haired bosses realise this, then we will be stuck with paper.
Kindle, iPad, Reader, Nook and OLPC all offer closed, to varying degrees, incompatability
readers. And, some require you to use THEIR servers to load YOUR own documents to
your OWN device. Companies need to be able to have control over what documents are
available in what formats and to what devices they choose. Personally, I am not going
to buy a device unless I have control over how I use it. The first company to offer a
cheap ($100 - $200) and open document view/reader will change the status quo.
1) A crisp blank sheet of paper is the greatest design tool ever invented.
2) Most computer applications don't support the many-to-many relationships with the same ease physical mediums do.
IME, word processors (such as Word) are the main impediment to the paperless office. The general problems are: they're based on the 8.5 x 11" paper paradigm, they contain unstructured data, and they're too difficult to share, search, and otherwise organize electronically. I use MS-Word at work, so my examples/complaints will be specific to Word. The issues I have with Word in how it impedes a paperless office are:
IMO, the paperless office isn't going to happen until Someone(tm) manages to replace the word processor with a database that looks and acts like a word processor. Kind of like how everyone can use a fax machine (which acts like a telephone and copier) but those same folks balk at using a computer scanner and email over tcp/ip even though the fax machine is simply a low quality scanner that uses an inflexible, low speed modem instead of a tcp/ip network connection.
The "Paperless" office is less about "no paper" and far more about LESS paper.
That's the key. I work in a paperless office. We don't have fix desks, and having nearly no paper is the key to make this work. We basically need our notebook and an external keyboard and mouse when we move (each desk has a 24' monitor). There are no paper stacks and files to move.
There are still printers in the office, especially legal documents have to be in paper form. Sometimes it's easier to draw something on a sheet of paper. These are rare cases and we are pragmatic enough to just use a piece of paper. Later we scan it, if we still need it's content.
We make heavy use of collaborative tools like Wikis and integrated project tools (like Trac or Redmine). Even our ISO 9001 is managed within a Wiki.
I remember back in the 80's, they said we were going towards a paperless office, with the integration of the computer. The only thing the computer did was generate MORE paperwork. As long as we have a government, there will be paperwork. I've been in the office machine business for almost 30 years, and the amount of clicks generated has gone through the roof.
When you've got a legal document that needs to be signed, dated, and potentially witnessed, there's no other sure-fire, legally-binding way to do it besides putting pen to paper. After that's done you can scan in the now-signed document, provide copies to those who need it, but that original one, with the original ink, is the one you want when TSHTF.
its the screen screns are way way behind paper in usability just to mention one huge problem: most writing is portrait (short end of page up) and most screens are landscape. screens are way slow; you can flip thru a dozen pages and find stuff, and compare two or 3 pages way easier on paper you can bring paper with you to a mtg, or lunch or whatever its easy to doodle on paper, if that helps you focus your thoughts
Digital signatures suck, because they can be cloned. No way to certify that it was signed by the person or even the computer it claims to belong to.
If it is digital, it can be cloned.
Adam Osborne once said that we'd have paperless offices when we had paperless bathrooms. That your organization has found a way to stunt paperwork flow is admirable. How are your bathrooms?
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
This is interesting - did they periodically change the cloth?
Back then at a university in Germany we decided to correct students weekly tasksheets via email.
The law department gave a specification how these data had to be saved. this included multiple offsite backups using specified and controlled systems etc. Thus we decided: every student prints his solution in addition to the email and the printouts get archived.
There is nothing yet in the electronic world with the reliability and durability of paper for stored records.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
My office has been almost, about 99%, paperless for 20 years. The paper I have is incoming things. For the last decade or so I've been scanning in those incoming docs which has further reduced my paper. Outgoing PDFs help too. It is doable.
Realize that paper is not made from prime wood. It's the junk. We do sustainable forestry on our family farm. The good stuff goes to veneer, cabinetry, lumber and such. Next is firewood. Wood pulp for making paper is the sweepings but there is a lot of that in order to thin the crops of trees to produce high grade wood. Wood is a very long term farm crop. What we tend now we'll harvest in 30 to 50 years.
Keep recycling those electrons.
RELIABILITY & RELIABILITY. The tangible quality of something which exists in the real universe beats the elusive bits. I think the community of IT engineers is to blame here - we need to do a better job. Especially software is far too dodgy!
I am a math teacher and use a tablet wirelessly connected to a projector to teach using OneNote. It has all the advantages of a chalkboard or pen and paper plus:
I always have all of my notes. Always.
My notes are in color. I have a large selection of colors and sizes. (and my highlighters dont get messed up or run out)
If I didnt leave myself enough room, I can make more room.
If I want to take an idea in another direction, I can copy what I have to another page and fork off in the direction I want.
Using OneNote, I can search through my handwritten notes as if they were text. Very useful for quickly finding old notes that are buried amidst lots of notes.
I can resize diagrams.
I can print pages to OneNote and use OCR to get the text from it or write all over it.
I can quickly copy any part of my screen to it.
I can publish my notes as PDF's or print copies.
I have not found one draw back. In fact, I would like you to try to think of one (perhaps I have over looked it).
Make sure you turn on pressure sensitive ink (obviously buy a tablet that is pressure sensitive) and select an ink thick enough so you can see the changes in width with the changes in pressure. This makes it look just like a hand written diagram.
The only word of caution to teachers is if you are copying and pasting something - give your students time to recopy it in their notes.
Also, get a tablet that is convertible. Then it is your laptop when you are doing regular stuff and yet when you need to draw a diagram - you can!
The real motto for tablet computers needs to be "Use but not over use" (just like the motion stuff for wii)
Dont write a paper in tablet mode - type it, it's faster. etc.
I am a mathematician who, like yourself, "thinks on paper". The tablet is the computer you need.
Get one with a dual digitizer. Active and passive. Get a convertible. Get OneNote. Resist the urge to do everything in tablet mode. I would bet most people with your sensibilities would not be disappointed. I know I am not.
Plus, I've heard there are OneNote like apps which also do math stuff, like evaluate determinants for you, draw graphs, take derivatives etc.. I have not looked into those yet.
I have used this set up for four years.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
while ((paper.cost < computer.cost) && (paper.ubiquity > computer.ubiquity) && (paper.easeOfUse > computer.easeOfUse))
{
paperlessOffice = false.
}
So if you want a paperless office work on raising the price and lowering the usability of paper.
A man much smarter than I once said: "A paperless office is about as likely as a paperless toilet...". Now, where were those three sea shells?
Recently I had an opportunity to write two research papers, and to be different I did it without printing out anything but the final drafts. All in all it was a successful experience. Here is how I did it.
First off, I used a Mac. This is important, because (a) OS X support for the PDF format is far superior to the support on Windows; and (b) because the Spaces virtual desktop and Expose window viewing make dealing with thirty open windows at once practical.
My research paper was a moderately short (4000 words), but had about twenty five source papers from various scientific journals. I downloaded the source papers in pdf form and gave them names similar to their citation name (e.g. Smith et al (2002)). I then opened the papers and distributed them around nine virtual desktops. Each virtual desktop represented a different type of paper, a different topic or a different side to the argument at hand. I then read each paper on screen and highlighted key passages (the Preview function on OS X has this feature built in, along with annotated notes). I also added notes to important passages, noting how I might use the particular passage in my essay. Again, on a Mac, annotating pdf's is very easy.
Once I finished reading and annotating, I began to write. I would drag the essay window around the desktops so I could view my essay alongside pertinent scientific papers. If I remembered a passage, but couldn't remember which paper it was in, I could just search the computer, as all pdf files are indexed word for word. Also, I was able to copy and paste full scalable vector graphics from the pdf files. If I saw a graph I wished to use, I just copied it and placed it in my document. In the final output, the graph was an exact copy, not an anti-aliased pixelated screenshot. I actually used LaTeX for this, and created new pdf versions of the graphs which I added to the source code.
The end result of this was a very nice looking final paper, with beautiful graphs and typography. I believe that not printing out the source papers was actually more efficient because it was so easy to navigate between them, and because I could search them. I have written many other papers in the past, and had previously always printed the journals out. The result was usually a sprawling and chaotic mess, where papers disappeared and where it was difficult to keep straight what was said in different papers. Using the Mac's amazing window and desktop management system made this not only possible, but advantageous. I didn't print out anything but the final version. Proof-reading the pdf files was good enough for me.
As to the topic at hand, I think one of the key factors that has prevented the paperless office is poor user interface design. With the right user interface, ditching paper becomes a possibility.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
It depends on what your goal is. Who here remembers what it was like when you had paper memos, routing forms, etc.? We accomplish so much business via email now, and other network mechanisms. How much drafting (e.g. architectural) paper was lost 30 years ago verse today.
While we are not paper-free, we are paper-less.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
If it's not on a PC, I can't do what I want with it. I can't cut/paste, move things around, slip them into a spreadsheet, IM or email, it's pretty much useless since it's in a format I can't work with.
Twinstiq, game news
I'm not talking about the margins either... if HTML did what it said on the tin, you'd be able to highlight text someone else wrote, and more advanced versions would let you circle things, and photos, or whatever.
The ability to put a mark on top of something, to mark up 1 layer..
Nothing beats a piece of paper for taking notes or drawing a quick diagram. Laptops take too long to boot Desktops are not portable PDAs are too small Whiteboards are too bulky to carry around Digital screens are mostly (ecluding e-ink type screens) not readable in direct sunlight. Software generally takes longer to perform the same task on paper. Using paper, it is instant on, can be read in direct sunlight, comes in various sizes and is light and easy to carry, and with everyone thinking about the environment it is "greener" than all the alternatives.
Paperless bathrooms are already possible, toilet/bidets with built in driers have been available in Japan at least for quite a while.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Instead of paper you could use water, hand (just use your other hand for eating) or cloth in the toilet. Ancient Romans used a cloth around a stick and it worked fine for them.
All of these are valid options, until you give people a choice. From that point its paper all the way.
Just as you COULD travel from New York to Los Angeles via horse and cart - but most people choose not to.
We've been able to publish from the desktop without printing anything but the finals for years. In fact, for large jobs, you can't print a proof of the final work anyway, so if you do print any proof (just to make sure that there's no postscript errors, say, which will mangle your output irrecognizably) it's usually letter-sized and you might not even bother to do it in color. Windows users have been buying Acrobat for years, which gives you all that magical PDF-mangling functionality.
Of course, Linux with Compiz and some other tools including Inkscape will do all that stuff too... although my experience with Inkscape and large PDFs involves a lot of crashing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
hand (just use your other hand for eating) or cloth in the toilet. Ancient Romans used a cloth around a stick and it worked fine for them.
You're American, right?
Deleted
People who make a living doing nothing but shuffling papers all around. Those sorts of people don't know s**t about computers.
It's the cost. Having a printed piece of paper is basically like an additional display - costing only fractions of cents. When displays get as cheap and easy to use, we'll have the paperless office.
SHITTY ASS IMPLEMENTATIONS OF DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS.
You know, things like http://www.global360.com Case manager.
OK, I'm not totally paperless. My collegues keep giving me the stuff but I almost never print anythng out since I started really using spotlight. Suddenly it no longer matters where the dcument is, cmd-Space and the first few letters and there it is. "cmd-~" switches to the next document and expose lets me see everything. About the only thing I ever print out anymore are coupons and directions. I know, a slashdot reader with no GPS and a crappy smartphone phone...shameful. Give me a few more months to get out of my contract and I should be truly paperless.
Apologies for sounding like a fanboy. I have a couple of friends who are similarly comfortable nigh paperless with their linux boxes. I really think the portablility is key. When sitting at your desk, computers these days do a pretty good job of eliminating the need for paper but what happens in the car? What happens when you want to show it off to someone who isn't armed with a really nice handheld or tablet, like me:( ?
Another problem is file sharing. Where do you put stuff to share with others? The network drive? Many people with whom I work are not employed by my organization so they can't get to the network. Google Docs is great but not everyone uses it and many are not comfortable having been asimilated by MS Office.
The technology is there. We just aren't comfortable with it yet. We will be though and it will be very soon. I thank Google, Facebook and the iPhone for bringing the necessary technologies to the mainstream. No, not being a fanboy this time. It's about the non-geek impact here. Facebook gave us a tool to easily and COMFORTABLY create information and share online. GoogleDocs gave us the power to collaborate with anyone and while there were plenty of smartphones before the iPhone and there are still plenty with more fuctionality, the iPhone put the smartphone is the hands of the non-geek and got them excited about it too!
Enough, I need some cookies.
Ignorant stupid people who can't function with any sort of technology.
Ignorant stupid technology you can't trust will not lose that one critical bit of information that will lose you your job.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
... designing a scanned document system customized for invoice storage. it works perfectly and is exactly what the customer wanted but it exposed a major issue with any kind of scanned document management system... organizing some kind of lookup system for the files that actually allows you to locate the document you want quickly and easily. in my case I get a data feed from the invoicing software to correlate with scans that are automatically named with the invoice number. there in lies the reason it works so well... the data for lookup is already keyed in during the normal generation of invoices. no additional man-hours are needed to key in scanned document specific information for later lookup and retreival. yes we have to manually feed the actual invoices into a document scanner (so we can capture signatures that were added post-invoice printing) but the number of man-hours it takes for that is orders of magnitude less than it took to manually sort and file each day's invoices... not to mention later retrieval. we're talking thousands of invoices a day also. the other place I've had success with going mostly paper-less has been in certain law firms where they receive their "faxes" as PDFs (through an eFaxing service) as well as scan in large case documents. the reason it works for them is they're scanning at most 1 to 2 large-sized documents for archival storage a day so the manual task of naming and filing those scans isn't a huge task. in the end being totally paperless is a nearly impossible task right now, but you can do things to lower your tree-killing count. :)
As far as i know there is no way to electronically sign formal contracts in a generally accepted fashion.
This hasn't been true for some years now. See the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act and the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act. Contracts can be formalized by signature, words or even actions. There are cases where the parties involved require a paper signed but there is no universal legal requirement for that to be the case. Heck, every time I go to the grocery store I sign a digital signature pad - there is no paper signature involved and I guarantee you that is a legally binding contract.
A few months back I bought a Fujitsu SnapScan S1500M, a nice little unit with an automatic sheet feeder and halfway usable OCR. I've been very impressed with the sheet feeder, the scan speed, and the scan quality. Not a single sheet feed error yet. (Except for the sheet folded in half--don't do that, the drive is one sided).
The packaged OCR, however, is hit and miss. And the user interface could be vastly improved. Rough, but promising.
With thin paper stock, the opposite document sides sometimes bleed through, and the post-processing doesn't manage to cancel this out, which strikes me a simpler than telephone echo cancellation. The OCR function in this case is rendered completely unworkable.
I held off for years because I regard paperless is worthless in the absence of halfway competent OCR. This has been a long time coming.
The main reason that paperless is a failed meme is that it's a negative measure and runs foul of "don't fix what isn't broken". For many purposes, paper ain't broken. For instantaneous retrieval by keyword and document sharing around the world, paper sucks.
I still like to print. Mostly complex colour plots on large format printers, data visualizations with high information density.
I'm presently scanning most of my hand-written notes (for which OCR is not yet applicable) and destroying the originals. I've set up the scanner profiles for a high enough resolution on the image capture that I should be able to throw a script at my document library five or ten years from now when hand-writing OCR passes the utility threshold.
In a couple of a cases with the S1500M I've run a dense warranty card through the scanner, English on one side, French on the other, with crowded lines and dense thickets of fine print and the OCR has come out nearly flawless, in both languages. This seems to happen most often when the letterforms are a sturdy, heavily-inked Helvetica style font, even if the letters are small to human eyes.
On receipts, it often fails to take notice that the font is monospace and subsequently fails to exploit this property to improve recognition accuracy. Amazing it works half as well as it does considering how much it leaves on the table.
Highly recommended if Fujitsu is committed to upgrading the algorithms. Not recommended if Fujitsu thinks the product is already good enough.
I've never had my desk crash, losing all pieces of paper on it. Contrast that to Windows.
Likewise I can easily and quickly back up my computerized work, whereas making photocopies of all my paper documents is so time consuming as to be infeasible.
no seriously. there are people that like hard copies of everything to file. I don't but some do. Also there are some places that require paperwork, especially us government agencies.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
What would it take for me to go paperless in my job?
I need 3 different devices, each should be able to do anything the smaller versions can do. They should be weather proof, petrolium products proof, easily survive rough handling, light enough to hold in one hand, have a battery pack that can last at least eight hours of continuous use, be wireless, be readable in any light condition, and have software that let's me take notes, text, email, search the web, conduct word searches in documents, and the ability to trace and highlight system and circuit paths.
The first needs to be the size of a small note pad, specifically for reading off checklists and instructions on how to conduct a specific job.
The second needs to be letter sized. Specifically for managing jobs, shifts, personnel, running reports, and taking notes during meetings.
The third needs to be legal size or larger. Specifically for use building or troubleshooting with system and wiring schematics.
Now once you have those magically devices ready to go. I need to have every single portal, training site, management site, historical records site, scheduling site, and basic computer access to have a common logon with access to a shared and private drive, a roaming profile, and have all those use 100% compatable file types, and if you could be so kind to have a hiearchy structure built in that lets anyone who needs to have access to data do so, without any effort on my part.
Or I could just print this form out for my boss on letter sized, sign it, and drop it in his in-box and get back to work seeing as I'll probably be dead before the tech world even comes close to the above.
... library and the paperless office. I'm surprised no one has mentioned copyright yet. That, and small display screens, and awkward methods of transferring documents. Email attachments just aren't as neat as handing someone a few papers.
Libraries ought to digitize everything, but they can't thanks to copyright law. Best they're allowed is online catalogs. If libraries were digital, there'd be no more multiple copies, late fees, limits on how many books patrons can check out at a time, returns, library cards, copy machines. No more trudging to the stacks and rooting around to find what they have of the several dozen items you looked up in the catalog. You'd just get the item itself in its entirety, not some Dewey Decimal catalog number. No more hunting around because they didn't shelve it in the correct spot, or discovering that it's checked out, or that they don't carry enough back issues to cover the one you want, or that they do have the publication but some jerk ripped out the pages you want.
And the mere act of libraries going digital would drive the creation of better access and transfer. As it is, paper breeds paper. The easiest way to copy a few pages is right back onto more paper! There are copiers that can email scans of a document instead of producing more paper, but they're crude. No OCR, just sends monster sized raster scans.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
a paperless office cannot and will not happen in our generation. if it is to inevitably happen, it will be by the children of today who didn't grow up with as big of a reliance on paper as us (and i'm saying this as a twenty year old.) you can't get an old dog to learn these new tricks.
besides, all of the plastics and such used to make technology is much more toxic to the environment than a stack of paper. just saying.
Do you really not have the ability to express yourself in sentences?Or do you write in code in conversational prose as well?
I use paper for memory. I take notes on a computer but for exam, tests, or speeches, I write out the ideas. My brain soaks in the ideas well when I can spatially separate them, highlighting text and whatnot.
I know a computer can do this, but I feel it's still missing something. Maybe it's just something with the feel of a pen writing on paper. Who knows. Anyways, my $0.02.
I work, for the most part, paperlessly. There are very few situations where I feel compelled to transfer something from the digital world to paper. In most cases, it is because I need to interact with another person who requires it. Those cases are coming less and less frequently. Now, to be fair, I am a software developer and I work with people who are -- for the most part -- comfortable sharing information digitally. But, I also have a side business as a property investor. For the most part, the people I deal with in that business are also quite willing to work digitally. There is the occasional person who can't seem to divorce them-self from their FAX machine and when it comes to signing documents, that tends to be the de facto mechanism. Now, once the lawyer gets involved (i.e. at the signing), everything becomes paper and understandably so. I think we will see the embracing of digital signatures. Its just not here yet -- at least not in a commonly accepted way. OK, with that said.... I do still read paper books. I am keeping my eye on the e-reader market though. Its beginning to get interesting and I will probably buy into it very soon.
One of the features that worked so well for me on OS X was the multiple desktop setup, combined with the ability to quickly shrink and choose windows, and the ability to instantly search any pdf on my system via a pre-indexed search system. This allowed me to work more effectively than if if I had thirty printed papers strewn on my desk.
The other thing that I have found rather more difficult on Windows systems is copying snippets from pdf files as vector objects. I know this is possible on Windows, but on a Mac, you just press control-C and control-V. On windows, when I did it this way I got an ugly screenshot version of the page whose resolution depended on the zoom level of the window. Macs generally play very nicely with pdf, because NeXT, the predecessor of OS X used post-script to display everything on the screen. Pdf was built into the system from day 1.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
People like working with paper. They can make notes, cross out large sections, tear it up...
1. You're a law firm or an accountant. Clients come in for meetings. You print your document, and get a signature. We scan the document to an indexing document management system, and the client takes the paper original away with them. We have the scanned image, and if we ever need it, we can print it THEN. After all, a modern copier is just a computer connected to a scanner and a printer; we store the image so that the time between scanning and printing can be months instead of seconds. Same process.
2. You're a medical group with several offices. People bring you forms. We scan the form into the document management system and the patient keeps the original. If the patient visits a different office tomorrow, it won't really matter - because their records are on the server. Come back here, come back there, come back next day or next year - your records are on the server. (None of this "cloud" crap; that's a recipe for disaster!)
The point is, paper isn't going anywhere, because paper is so darned useful! It's easier to create and edit documents on paper,. and if you need to go somewhere else, paper is the perfect medium. But when you're done with it, scan it and shred it. One should never STORE paper documents!
You can't fold up an email into a dart and chuck it at your coworker.
That *was* a joke. Good gods, don't you guys think I took flexible just a tad out of context here?
my boss can't read all my stickies and see how much work I'm shirking. At least, not with my handwriting he can't.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The fact that my manager throws a fit if I bring my laptop to meetings to take notes, because "he thinks it's rude". I guess he must think I'm surfing porn rather than looking up information about the subject being discussed, or taking action item notes.
I don't believe the problem is with markup - and yes, you can do that with HTML. (It's not pretty, and to do it quickly would require a program designed to do it, but css and z-index...no problem.) 'Course, this is all a software problem, not a format of the document problem. (HTML is meant to be flow-able to many different sized screens, making markup a tad more difficult, but you could easily convert to PDF or make your "marked up" copy use absolute positioning.)
The problem is with the "tablet" style computer that's just not quite there yet. Even "good" pens have atrocious accuracy compared to a pen or pencil on paper. They're expensive. If they're not using the SLOW e-ink, they need to be charged frequently. They don't support multiple pen widths very well...
One problem that haunts computers is the many format issue, and what document tracking pedagogy to you submit it to. When people are on different systems, things can quickly become a pain. Having something like an XML document that gets parsed to whatever end-use format it needs to be can take care of some of that.
The screen technology is coming along. We have black & white e-ink, and they're working on color. I believe refresh rates can be improved.
To me, the biggest problem is the "feel" of the stylus on the screen, whatever it happens to be. Fix that, let economies of scale work for a few years, and we'll have a working usable 8.5x11color e-ink - or reflective TFT, or whatever - tablet with wireless and most the horsepower of a modern laptop in a form factor of a kindle DX. Then the only problem is software - which is usually where the real stumbling blocks are.
I don't believe we'll ever totally get away from the notebook - you can rip sheets from it and give it to people who don't have your wonderful tablet, but you can get awfully close.
Seriously, in my office the only people who print things are people over 40.
I think the idea of a "paperless" office is a bit extreme. Lots of people have reduced the amount of paper they use in the office, and I think this trend will continue. Going truly "paperless" strikes me as either a buzzword not to be taken seriously, or a perfectionist's notion of how a modern office should be. I've notice my boss talks of having "gone paperless" and indeed I see very little paperwork in in office, but I do notice him aways keeping a small notebook in his shirt pocket. He's a wise man.
All those fraking office meetings and all the idiots who seem to conjure them up at a whim. They usually have to put stuff on paper so it makes them look like they know what the hell they are talking about.
Did I mention the meetings?
I've seen people literally print-out 300 page (single-sided) manuals and PDFs, which will probably only be read by them, once. I think they do it to appear to be "busy".
No matter what industry you are in, one will encounter the undeniable need to have an 'original' copy of something on paper, even if it originated in a purely digital manner. If you do business with other entities, the number of incidents will only increase.
One of the features that worked so well for me on OS X was the multiple desktop setup, combined with the ability to quickly shrink and choose windows, and the ability to instantly search any pdf on my system via a pre-indexed search system.
You get that on Windows with the Microsoft virtual desktop power toy (though not as nice as OSX or Linux has it - Linux, BTW, has an implementation superior to that on OSX, via Compiz) and with Google Desktop or perhaps even Windows Search 4.0 on Windows, and one of several search implementation on Linux which understands PDFs.
The other thing that I have found rather more difficult on Windows systems is copying snippets from pdf files as vector objects. I know this is possible on Windows, but on a Mac, you just press control-C and control-V.
That's how it works on Windows as well, if you have a version of Illustrator sufficiently new to work with the PDF in question. Inkscape is making this possible for free across platforms. You may have to do some occasional exporting at this stage, but things are progressing.
Macs generally play very nicely with pdf, because NeXT, the predecessor of OS X used post-script to display everything on the screen. Pdf was built into the system from day 1.
PDF wasn't built into the system from day one; PostScript was. PDF does things that PostScript doesn't, and it might be partially responsible for OSX's general laggishness compared to NeXTStep.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, there won't be usable e-ink displays next year. All we'll get is a shitty iPad.
*Looks at kindle*
*Looks at Sony e-Reader*
*Scratches head*
Huh?
I think most posts have mentioned it in different ways, but the biggest issue I have seen is the need to change the internal business workflows along with the technology. Most attempts I have seen just throw the technology in and expect things to just work out. In those cases the technology became used for digital archiving rather than a paperless transition.
I'm the test manager for a company that creates products for people to write on paper and have that writing turned into digital ink, and ultimately recognized as useful information once it gets back into the software (integrates with Excel, PDF, ESRI, and the like). I'll bet the test team alone goes through a couple of boxes of paper a week. I can't remember the last time I bought paper for home.
If the paperless office stood any chance of happening any time soon, our company would be doomed. But, for whatever reasons, the reality is that there exist situations where people need to print paper and write on it. Fire fighters in wildfire situations printing A0 or bigger maps, and scribbling plans on them. Court documents, military scenarios where even a Toughbook isn't going to cut it ("a computer with a bullet hole in it is a brick, a map with a hole is still a map").
Now you people printing your email, or copies of a PowerPoint slide deck for a meeting, just cut it the hell out.
If you think that's what a bidet is designed for, then you are horribly abusing your bidet
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
I think if I keep re-printing this 100 page word document every time I change a letter I'll eventually run out of paper...
If you think that's what a bidet is designed for, then you are horribly abusing your bidet
Well it's not a drinking fountain... ... I mean... is it?
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
That's what holding us back.
Paper.
There. I said it.
Get off my lawn you old farts, and stop making stupid rules which unfairly target young people!
Ok, it's no match for scissors, but beats stone. What else in our universe does that ?
But serious... paper, pen and pencil, that's all you need.
If you think that's what a bidet is designed for, then you are horribly abusing your bidet
He's talking about "Washlets" in Japan, which are indeed paperless toilets.
Working in a highly regulated field like medical technology requires some level of paper documentation to satisfy regulatory agencies. With that said, our company DOES utilize software quite extensively for reviews, approvals and internal documentation. It's just not currently possible to eliminate 100% of paper-based tasks.
Plus, many countries require printed documentation for medical devices, so dead-tree manuals are still a requirement to market most medical devices.
My office (part of a large corporation) has been paperless for probably five years now. And it wasn't even a conscious decision: paper simply does not scale. I haven't used paper for anything other than reading a long document while on a plane for years. And I don't see almost any paper in any office around mine. The paperless office has been a reality for some time for many. Those that have not gotten there yet are living in the past.
how can we get a paperless office if even on slashdot people want to print ;-)
to code or not to code, that is the question.
Our CEO is extremely tree-friendly, and so we are discouraged from printing anything. I'd say we have about the most paperless office I've ever seen. I almost never print anything, and can go two weeks without doing so. As revolting as it is, we use Lotus Notes 6.5 (I know there are better things, but we've built ourselves around it and are now stuck with it) and I find the markup on Word works well for me (and I review a lot of documents). In fact, my job involves document management, and so you would expect me to print a lot - yet I don't. We've evolved a culture where if someone actually prints something out to show to people or mark up, they're considered a bit backward, and are shunned appropriately. I'd say the average employee prints about 10 pages a month, tops, in our office.
Management that requires me print out a timesheet in from excel and then get it printed and signed then I scan the signed document and email it to the appropriate people.
All the official documents in my office are in electronic form. We print them only to read and annotate in meetings, but then the first thing we do is to correct the electronic form. Depending on your definition, one could call that "paperless". If we were to relocate, 99% of the moved documents would be in electronic form.
Sometimes a weird procedure asks for a hand-signed form. This is the only case where we have "papered" documents. I suspect this is because of human habits and non-technical management that doesn't know the advantages of crypto-signing.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned this until now, but... paperwork.
Most of the paper I use is because they force me to hand in printed invoices, requests, certificates, copies of certificates, reports, etc. etc. etc.
Perhaps in other countries like the US it's not so bad, but in my country, all the main paperwork has to be done offline and with physical paper. And there's a LOT of it.
I've never had my desk crash, losing all pieces of paper on it. Contrast that to Windows.
Yeah, but you don't hand-write your notes on used toilet paper either, do you? ;-)
Back in the 80s, I remember someone saying that a paperless office would be about as useful as the paperless toilet.
At least you know the guy advocating paperless toilets isn't full of shit :)
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex and http://sjc.blog.uvm.edu/archives/memex-1.jpg
Something like this? Designed/envisioned in 1945 :)
The concept of 'document' is wrong when it comes to computers. The paperless office will not materialize if information is not stopped being distributed in the form of 'documents'.
The problem has been worsened by long time use of word processors that make document creation easy, thus allowing people to cram all the relevant information about a task in a document. And since information is in a document, people prefer to hold a physical copy in their hands, because the paper seems less annoying than the screen.
We store our home photos on CDs and only print the really good photos at Walmart/Blacks/Shoppers etc. This saves us money but we get to keep some photos that aren't good enough to print but worth keeping all the same. So we're almost "paperless" in that sense. But a paperless office needs a solid backup strategy but what backup medium can survive in the long run 100%? An office (or home user) could burn to CD/DVD but how long will they last before they become inaccessible?
That's what's holding it up. When monitors integrate the pen tablet and portrait layout, then a paperless office will be feasible. Until then, forget about it.
Just a brief story on what is holding my company (insurance) back.
A few years back we looked into "paperless". What we found out, yes of course the IT department could do it. We would need terabytes worth of space but it could be done fairly easily. However, after having our legal department look at the same issue we found that NO we can not do it. The law was worded to state that we NEED to have a paper file on site. In some cases we needed to keep the file for 20 years.
So, from a IT perspective NOTHING was keeping us from going paperless. However, from a red tape perspective we could not go paperless. At least that is how it is in my industry.
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
I've noticed that there seems to be an either/or mentality when it comes to technology. And this really is a false dichotomy.
When it comes down to it, what matters the most is utility, with personal preferences coming a distinct second. Pen and paper in an office is a tool, just as the computer is. The question ultimately becomes which is better for each task.
If you're dealing with lots of legal contracts, you're going to have paper files - same if you need to keep long term records, as the technological issues that might arise with a computer won't with a filing cabinet. On the other hand, if you're dealing with customer support, where you need to be able to call up files while on a phone, a database is a lot better for the task than a filing cabinet.
There's an old saying: just because you can do a thing, it does not follow that you SHOULD do that thing. The paperless office as an umbrella term falls under that phrase in a big way. Yes, it is possible to do everything by computer. That doesn't make it a good idea, though. It's a lot better to use the best tool for each job, be it a computer or paper.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
There are some dangers to the paperless office. Digital media in the long run is more volatile than paper. As more and more data goes digital we may be robbing from future generations. Formats change, disks go bad, hardware changes. Even wihtout a major catastrophe like a solar flair or the break down of society, degradation of media such as CD's, magnetic tape back ups, and hard drives is relatively rapid compared to good old paper. As long as a piece of data is continuously shifted and backed up across several medians it's fine but once day to day maintenance ends for a piece of digital data it starts to dye. Then again will anyone really want to read your quarterly earnings 200 years from now? Maybe it's good to forget.
At the cost of sounding too sci-fi, i can tell you right now the only time we will truly be able to go paperless, much or less...
We need to develop a small portable machine that chews up paper from one end, and shreds it, pulps it, then repapers it on the other side, that way all the recycling needed is to buy the machine and mast involved, then what ever paper is needed can be found anywhere, no more paper costs, because we already have all the paper we need....we just rechew it each time over.
Problem is, the cost of such a machine, and even once mass produced to bring the price down, it would have to remain up to th companies to enforce their policies of using such machines and recycling their own paper.
where everything gets printed, so the politicians can look at a pretty posterboard to make their decisions.
If anything, the technology has moved us farther away from the paperless office, by making it easier to print copies of everything. Rather than a triplicate form that requires you to press hard when you write, we can print a copy for anyone remotely interested in a document - and we do. Rather than deciding what is important enough to write down and store in our hard files, we are storing everything. To make matters worse, computers have greatly increased our ability to put out large volumes of data. In my city's engineering department, the same project that in 1950 took 5 pages of blueprints (counting the cover sheet) now takes 3 bound volumes. "This standard drawing might apply" means "go ahead and put it in too," so out of 10 pages of standard plumbing details, there might be 1 single fixture that is reelvant to the project. Standard sheets drawn by the state department of transportation get included - with hundreds of X-ed out drawings on the parts that aren't relevant. It is easier to just insert the sheets than it is to redraw only the relevant portions. Any by law the engineering department has to store 2 hard copies, in perpetuity. I can find drawings of the last 3 city hall buildings (2 of which no longer exist), and 20-year-old as-built drawings for the current city hall, but somehow the most recent renovations, alarm upgrade, AC replacement, and network wiring projects never got included - and the (manual) filing system is woefully overloaded, as it is the same filing system that has existed for 70 years - fine for 5 pages of blueprints per project, not so good for 500.
Operating departments arent any better. Person who takes a call puts in a work order, and generally prints a hard copy. Another copy or two get printed up as part of the "which department does this go to?" process. Boss in relevant department prints a copy, before the person actually taking action prints a copy. Then records of the action/response are made, printed, and stored - so each person can say "this is what I did in answer to that issue." If multiple departments are involved, their communication with eachother gets stored, (at both ends,) in case there is later a disagreement over who did what, and if it was proper.
I hear from lawyers that things get even worse in that field - since so much of contracting is cut-and-paste, every time a contract is written, it is a little longer than the last one. Hard copy of various drafts get stored, as well as the final version of the contract. And every lawyer involved keeps a separate set, hard copy. The volume of documents in law offices is easily 10 times or more what it was for the same sized office 25 years ago.
Even if we get selective and only keep the most important 10% of files as hard copy, the amount keeps growing daily.
And why does everyone insist on keeping their own, paper copy? The IT departments have this habit of losing our files. Lowest-bidder software contracts mean constant software changes - for a long time, the city switched from Word to WordPerfect (or back) every 2 years, meaning most of the staff had to retrain, and create a new set of forms. New software means learning new ways to access our old files, and any upgrade might be the one that loses our old archives - maybe they forgot to tell us the new computers won't have disk drives, until after the trade-in occurred, or maybe the new email archiving system didn't handle attachments on old emails.
Bureacracy makes it harder to reduce paper. Outdated filing systems that haven't been updated in the lifetime of many of the employees don't help. Computers making it easier and easier to generate large volumes of documents, (but not trustworthy enough that we can do without hard copy,) push us FURTHER from the so-called "paperless office."
Another great discussion topic for worthless people with time on their hands.
The only impediment is people who hand me printouts instead of sending me the original file. After they send me the file, I recycle the paper. Having worked from home for years, I can assure you that paperless is a no-brainer. The only mail I got from the company was e-mail.
I take that back though... I do use paper for handwritten notes some times.
I don't use much paper. Most people in IT don't use paper much. You might print out a big diagram to hang on the wall for everyone to look at but almost everything is in electronic form.
Except for the meeting room. In my current position I'm the one that hosts most meetings I attend. I need to bring hand-outs for people, and I need to take notes. While I could use a laptop to take notes - and sometimes I do - it's not the most practical tool and I feel as though it can interfere with the flow of a discussion.
So that's it - meetings. You need notebooks and handouts.
Companies can greatly reduce the number of hand-outs at meetings if they include projectors in every room, however. At my last contract, 100% of the conference rooms had projectors. You could set up your computer and walk through a powerpoint or just a word document for everyone to see and no paper needed. You could even take notes right on the big screen and people can participate in that part too. You still needed hand-outs sometimes but quite a bit less often. (And, I ran Ubuntu on my notebook so it was fun when everyone gawked at Desktop Cube and Wobbly Windows.)
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I was recently asked for a copy of a paper (sic!) that I wrote and presented seven years ago for the European Parliament on this problem, and have decided to make it more freely available: you can download "In Praise of paper" at http://www.pensive.eu/file/65.ppsx
1. Drawing is hard on a computer. But it's hard with a pencil too. We took years to learn how to run a graphite stick in school.
2. For typing and for linear tasks in general keyboards work well. Adding a mouse, or learning all of vi/emacs move commands makes piecewise linear tasks (programming) faster. I would not want to try to use Adobe Illustrator with a keyboard interface. (Although I do use left hand on the keyboard, right hand on the wacom stylus. Left hand changes/mods tools.)
3. I once looked at paperless schools -- kids turn in their essays electronically, get marked by the teacher on screen, and returned for rewrites electronically. However I never found anything that allowed a teacher to work with that was as fast as a red pencil. The closest I ever saw was a NeXTStep application called, 'red pencil' that allowed you to use standard proof reader markup. Still wasn't as fast.
4. Screens aren't big enough. Even with dual monitors.
The screen of my dreams: It's a quarter cylinder laying across my desk on edge, with my eyes at the center of the arc. It runs from edge to edge of the desk. It has programmable hyperbolic geometry. As I move a window toward the edge, it shrinks. (but remains euclidian within the frame) This allows me to find stuff on my desktop.
5. The computer needs to become a better secretary. I need to talk to it. Right now to email a document I have to:
a. Select the gmail tab.
b. Start an email to the recipient.
c. Click attach file.
d. Find the file in my file system.
e. Say ok.
f. Put a note in to give context
g. Put a meaningfull subject line on it.
h. Click send.
What we need to be able to do is say, "Thrall (or whatever you call your computer) send this file to Mike Wingate"
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
If you think that's what a bidet is designed for, then you are horribly abusing your bidet
Apparently he doesn't know how to use the three seashells.
"I haven't seen a document-management system yet that could handle this particular dichotomy."
WORM (Write Once, Read Many) fitted perfectly into what you described.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
My "two cents" is that the primary barriers to a fully paperless office are the existing business\office infrastructure, the cost of paperless technologies, and confidence in the paperless technologies.
/. article today that talks about how the OS model needs to be re-evaluated\designed, the way common business practices take place may need to be rethought with regards to the pros and cons that paperless technology offer and have new infrastructure designed\built around them.
Existing Infrustructure
Though the cost of upgrading the infrastructure might be a part of the barrier existing infrastructure poses, I think the primary effect it produces is a barrier to the transition to paperless. Even if all the costs were covered for a transition to paperless, the existing infrastructure present in (what I would guess to be >90% of) companies was assembled in, around, and to support the use of paper. Just as there is another
Money
Assuming the infrastructure was ready to facilitate the transition to paperless, the cost of the new paperless technologies would have be addressed\covered. These costs are likely to be significant when providing the necessary technologies to replace everyday use\representation of paper in a way that would encourage the users not to go buy a printer, pads and boxes of pens on their own. It may be tempting to just buy another monitor for those with one or large monitors for "more demanding" use. Unfortunately, while this addresses the visual aspect of data usage, it does nothing to replicate the "tactile data manipulation" present in the use of paper and writing utensils. Just to drive this point home, the most natural paperless arrangement I've seen has been in movies (no, not the super-cool-glove-with-dots-on-the-fingers-projection-on-glass-wall-computer(s) from Minority Report - that tech was pretty cool but seemed more cool than useful). The paperless setup that I've seen and like the best is in "The Island" in the bad-guy's office. He had an office that was concrete, metal and glass that could electronically transition from clear to frosted\opaque (tech that already exists). He had no computer on his desk. Hardly anything in his office. What he did have was a desk with a frosted\clear glass pane for the desktop surface. Of course you probably already know\guessed that the computing environment was projected on that frosted glass but what I thought was the unique part was that he had a couple objects sitting on his desk that interacted with it. The two objects (at least that were used and I remember) were a "hand sized" metal pyramid and a metal pen\stylus. The pen stylus was used for all the things you might imagine (pointing, clicking, drawing) and the pyramid was used more as a control object that would do more functional things like move windows, change modes of windows, and if I guess: Performed things like power on\off, volume control, brightness control....and so on.
That setup seemed to provide the most ergonomic "paper replacing" computing environment that I've seen but it WAS built in an evil lair and, from what I gather, those aren't known to be cheap.
Confidence
Assuming that an office\company was able to prepare their business infrastructure for the transition and they could afford it, they would then be faced with what I see to be the last hurdle of convincing EVERYONE in the office to use it for ALL processes for which they might have previously used paper. This would probably take the form of more resiliant and internally publicized backup systems. Users would need ultimate confidence that their document isn't going to evaporate in to the ether under ANY circumstance at ANY time (kinda like a piece of paper). Sure, if the building burns down paper would be gone, so maybe you can slide on that one but, that is where a RESILIENT backup system that had one of the pillars of data backup in place (Off-Site Backups) would prove beneficial. One usb hard drive plugged in to your server with a scheduled batch file to copy data is not going to cut it.
How do you let someone know what they need to do to login to a computer if they have never logged in before and they start an hour before you get in, but you're the only technician on staff?
People that think of setting up paperless offices forget that instructions are sometimes needed just to use the technology that is needed to be paperless. I do not believe it is possible to truly be paperless, but there are always ways to improve.
As an example, I have to attend a meeting once a week from a location away from my desk but have to have 2 documents with me that I recieve electronically. One of them is a PDF and the other is a Word doc. Since my computer is a tower PC, I have to print the documents to have them with me for the meeting. If I had a laptop or purchase something such as the upcoming iPad, I would be able to eliminate the need to print 2 documents a week saving over 100 sheets of paper a year. Now if everyone that attended the same meeting was able to do the same, we could save over a thousand sheets a year (2 reams) and this is just one group in a much larger department of a global company. It adds up.
Our brains like to map things in a model similar to that which we already know. I can write on a piece of paper, I can doodle. I can draw arbitrary lines and shapes wherever I choose, and I can put it in a physical space on my desk which isn't limited to my screen real estate. It is real to me, in a way that a window on my desktop is not. It follows laws of physics. The matter will not be destroyed if my machine reboots and I forget to click save.
Because our computer applications do not follow the same laws as our physical world, we can't think about them in the same way. In many cases we don't need to. There are advantages of course to not being restrained to the laws of the physical world. We can make copies of our data, we can apply different templates and formatting to it without rewriting the content.
Can we create technologies which carry both the benefits of the digital world and the solidity and predictability, and reliability of the physical world? I think this is possible, but it requires a much greater discipline than we normally apply to our product design. It requires that intuitive workflows be established and well supported, and that the interface itself have parallels to our experience of the physical world. It requires a lot of thinking about what we do and how and why. We just don't hold ourselves to very high standards in this regard. We are lazy. And we are unimaginative about the ideal role of technology.
Easiest way... Remove the printers from the office. That's what they did in my office. one day without warning Field Service just yanked it. its very rare that I have to print something out so if I need to I switch to a secondary network I have access to and print from there. but let me tell you removing the printers not only saved cost in paper and ink but removed the problems of having to reset print spoolers on servers and complaining to Field Services to fix them.
> > If you think that's what a bidet is designed for
> Well it's not a drinking fountain... ... I mean... is it?
Depends entirely on your species.
> He's talking about "Washlets" in Japan, which are indeed paperless toilets.
From your linked Wikipedia stub:
"In order to determine the anal position, 300 male and female employees of Toto were surveyed during development."
I don't know who's got the shittier job here...the surveyors or the surveyed employees...LOL!
"Toto...I don't think we're in Kansas anymore..."
> Apparently he doesn't know how to use the three seashells.
LOL! He doesn't know how to use the three seashells!!! :-D
I'm missing why all this clever stuff with pdfs is only available on a Mac. Do you get a free full version of Acrobat with a Mac or something?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Mac comes with the Preview program which is in my opinion is far superior to Adobe's free viewer. Preview allows you to annotate pdf files and to select a rectangle and copy/paste it. It can be pasted into any software that supports smart vector objects (the iWork suite for one). The copied snippet is an exact rendering of the original.
Another feature of Preview that I love is the ability to make a new pdf file from a selection on the clipboard. Thus, you can select a graph on a scientific paper, put it on the clipboard with ctrl-C, and then choose "New pdf from Selection" in the menu. Up pops a brand new pdf file, an exact copy of the selected graph, including dimensions. This can then easily be included in other documents. I use LaTeX, so I just use the "includegraphics" command.
Another great feature of Preview is the way it selects multi-column text. On other pdf viewers, when you try to select text in a paper that has two columns, the selection spans the entire page, covering both columns at once. Preview on the other hand selects downwards through the column. It even spans the selection over multiple columns.
I do not have Adobe Acrobat installed, either the reader or the full package. And I don't want them installed. Acrobat Reader is an atrocious piece of nagware that relentlessly updates itself.
I realize you can probably do many of these things on Windows, but you will likely have to pay lots of money for the full version of Acrobat. And I doubt this solution would be as smooth or as easy to use as it is on a Mac.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
went paperless about 8 years ago - haven't missed it at all.
You are telling me now!!??