Slashdot Asks: Is Paperless Office a Dream? (betanews.com)

A new report by Danwood, which surveyed 1,000 office workers, almost half said that they print something every day and 84 percent said printing things on paper at work was an "important aspect of work." In the past, we have seen a trend growing at many workplaces where things are moving increasingly digital, implying strongly that our reliance on paper must be reducing as a result. From a report: Danwood even cites a recent IDC research which says 49 percent of business expect their print volumes to increase over the next two years. Eight in ten (80 percent) of respondents say they need paper documents to get their job done. "Despite a move to digitization, organizations remain reliant on print", says Danwood CEO Wes Mulligan. "Businesses are mindful of unnecessary waste when it comes to physical documents, but print and digital will continue to coexist in today's organizations. The easiest way to strike a balance is to look at ways that you can better integrate paper and digital processes to have a real impact on efficiency, productivity and cost reduction."What do you guys think? Will we ever hit a stage where paper will have a minimal footprint, if at all, at workplaces?

Update: Reader argStyopa shares his views on why paper is here to stay, and for good: (1) Paper is portable and readable in all circumstances. I don't need to fire up a reader, connect to Wi-Fi, turn on a laptop, whatever: here's your piece of paper, read it.
(2) Paper is durable and fixed-format: if I put a paper in a file and come back 10 or even 100 years later, barring catastrophe, it'll still be there. The vagaries of non-cloud storage, and (for the cloud) the evolution of e-storage and e-doc formats means that even if I HAVE the file, I might not be able to read/open it. I have enough trouble opening now 25-year-old docs from my college days plunking on a MacSE.
(3) It's harder to edit paper: simply put, e-docs are easier to fake, generally.

Comments

It's pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the paperless office is pointless. Sometimes physical paper cannot be replaced, and the convenience cannot be matched.

Re:It's pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, it cannot be hacked and won't crash. Plus, it really gives the impression that you are important if you carry paper around and have a lot of it on your desk. Most of the people here that have an empty office with a single computer sitting on their desk are assumed to be excess baggage and will go in the next round of layoffs.

Just like the optical drive discussion...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't print stuff, so there's no way anyone anywhere could possibly need to print either."

Yes. It will never happen.

[argStyopa]

TSIA.

Since I need to add more to satisfy the /. posting god, my point is that
1) paper is portable and readable in all circumstances. I don't need to fire up a reader, connect to wifi, turn on laptop, whatever: here's your piece of paper, read it.
2) paper is durable and fixed-format: if I put a paper in a file and come back 10 or even 100 years later, barring catastrophe, it'll still be there. The vagaries of non-cloud storage, and (for the cloud) the evolution of estorage and edoc formats means that even if I HAVE the file, i might not be able to read/open it. Shit, I have enough trouble opening now 25 year old docs from my college days plunking on a MacSE.
3) it's harder to edit paper: simply put, edocs are easier to fake, generally.

There are a host of things that paper isn't: searchable, stored effortlessly taking no space, easily (instantly) sent to someone else not present, backed up in case of loss, there are probably a ton of others. But the fact is that for what paper does, and what's important in a business/legal context, it's pretty irreplaceable.

Ignoring the clickbait headline.

[MrKrillls]

One more article that poses a false dichotomy. It's not a binary either or. No office or worker can exist in an absolute paperless existence. Even the "paperless office" has to let paper in the door, has to scan it or OCR it for digital retention. And when the power goes out, paper will pop up as a pretty workable temporary fallback *tool*.

And that gets me to the second point, that getting stuck in the "either / or" binary means one stops asking what is the best tool for the job. I try to print out as little as I can. Most things stay digital - until I start designing things or need to jot stuff down super quick. When I'm designing from scratch, trying to structure things, loads of cheeeep paper and good marking tools blow the doors off of digital tools. I can rough out the general structure of anything from a landscape design to a database schema, on paper, faster and better than I can click.

But not everything starts best analog. Most long form writing seems better for me to start and stay digital. I can think and edit text better and faster on screen. For me the real question is what tool is best for a given task, *for a particular person or organization*?

Re:Fax

[EvilSS]

Maybe someday we can finally get rid of fax machines.

Good luck. The legal profession (and extensions of them, such as courts, mortgage brokers, etc) refuse to move on from them. And the medical profession to a lesser extent.

Never, unless we learn to write for online reading

[gachunt]

My co-worker (in our in-house printshop) once told me, "I love the paperless society. I've never been busier".

Having been in the web industry for 15 years now, working for 3 different 4000+ employee companies, I've seen several attempts to "go digital".

In each project, I warn the C*O that success of the project does not rely on million-dollar document management software or high-speed scanners, but on creating original documents that are easy to read/understand online.

And I am ignored. And I watch the project fail.

Online reading (reality is: "online scanning") is a whole new world to the office. It's a huge-culture change that needs to happen.

We've all been taught to write the hamburger essay. That doesn't work online. Online requires getting to the point quickly, chunking information with headlines, short paragraphs.

-- If you don't create documents that are easy to consume online, then people will print them off to read them --

Another important success factor: a robust search engine and proper architecture. Again, more things that are ignored and not taught to make paperless a reality. The whole self-service "everyone can add their own document" feature is a horrible idea. Dedicate a resource to manage search and navigation of your document repositories.

Re:i'd settle for competent paper use

[networkBoy]

Then look at the people who print out a document, redline it with a pen, then type the redlines into the softcopy file they just printed out.

This is a valid use case.
Proofing on paper is vastly different than proofing on the screen, especially if for something that is final output to paper.
You're not only looking at spelling, grammar, word choice, etc. you're looking at layout, font, flow, margining, and all the other things that go into it. Add to that the tactile response of a good pen...

Yes you could use a stylus and tablet... but it's not the same. Eye fatigue is higher with screens as well.
-nB

Not a dream, just the tech is only halfway

[rbrander]

Remember that shot in "Avatar" where a guy makes a vague gesture of waving a document from his desktop screen and towards a pad in his hand, and the document does exactly that? Those folks have finally replaced paper - not because of that one thing, but because it implies a document is always with you, effortlessly and seamlessly.

It goes much further than that. Paper documents you've printed off and carry with you can be *found* in a couple of seconds. During a meeting if you say, "I've got it right here"...and more than about four seconds elapse before you are showing that document or reading aloud from it, the conversation moves on past you. And it takes more than four seconds to find a document in a file system; less than four to shuffle through up to several pieces of paper (we can hold up to seven things in mental RAM, remember) and pull something out. So printing something serves as a proxy for making it more accessible.

At the moment, if you want to share that electronic document, you go through multiple steps, again breaking up a conversational flow - or it's impossible because your pad is Android and their's is iPad, or something. Or your meeting guest isn't on the corporate LAN. But if the guest brings six copies on paper, the sharing is accomplished in 15 seconds of passing-around-the-room.

Most printing I saw in the last few years related to meetings and passing out copies; or it was training materials. When you make a vague gesture waving the document on your pad to all the other pads in the room, and "it just works", a lot of modern printing needs will go away. When everything is searchable as quickly and quietly shuffling through some paper with half an eye while staying in a conversation, more will go away.

The problems will be solved one at a time. What people still haven't absorbed about computer use is the UI dictum that a four-second delay causes loss of focus and an eight-second delay starts the user off on different tasks - in a meeting, task #1 is to pay attention to the meeting, so the job of the pad simply doesn't get done and paper is brought next time. After we finally get sub-second, or at least less than 4-second solutions to all the things that paper is good at, use will finally decline. Sail had a long overlap with steam, too.