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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.
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~
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.
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.
Quote: There are still people.. lots of them.. who will print out emails to read them. No technology will fix this.
Agreed. My place of work takes orders from the website, prints them and plops them into their ERP system. I have been brought in to fix this but there are active parties fighting me tooth and claw.
For too many reasons to list. Needing a "Human Glue" means job security.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
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.
In my travel experience, Third World countries that maintain the taboo of eating with the left hand do so because they have mastered the art of wiping their asses, but not washing their hands. At most they would just quickly run water over the hand, but the idea of using soup and scrubbing their hands good just doesn't seem to occur to the masses.
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.
The "miracle" of word processors has brought us a general decline in the quality of output. Secretaries had extensive knowledge in how to professionally layout and format a document. Now that nay numb nuts with word can produce a doc and think it looks good. As a CAD guy, I can tell you the same thing is happening in engineering to a greater degree. Engineers are coming out of school with only a cursory introduction to drafting and they think they can produce quality professional looking sheets. Unfortunately engineering drawings depend more on the layout and format to make them clear and engineers generally don't have a clue. They know what information needs to be on there and they put it on. It's all clear to them, but if you read it cold you'll get lost in the chaos. Who needs secretaries? a whole lot more people than realize it.