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The Paperless Office ?

Yes, the paperless office lol. I remember hearing about it in the early 80's. What information technology those days was to produce MORE paper....

However....

In my own line of work (as a university academic) the paper-less office is starting to become a reality. Thanks to impoved fonts/screen resolution, more storage space, seamless communication/sharing ability and electronic mark-up tools, I deal with less and less paper. What was routinely committed to paper is now left in electronic form through its whole life cycle.

Although somewhat later than predicted, the paperless office is now on the way to becoming a reality.

Tez
 
This is humour? Tragicomedy perhaps.

I think it is a pretty sad story. It is the story of failure. It shows just how inadequate computers are. It shows how programmers failed to make a functional and stable interface for office use. It shows how computers never got universally adopted by society. Perhaps you don't agree with such a harsh judgement, but it is certainly clear how the computer has been mis-applied in the office.

In this part of the world we have a very excellent and large book store called Duthies. They have been around for a long time and symbolize the book world here. In a month from now they will be closing for good. One of the points of discussion with the owner was the cost of operation compared to how things were. It was pointed out that things were once simple with low overhead. Now they have high computer costs with constant "upgrades". IOW, the computer is contributing to the death of books, yet it is not replacing "paper".

Edit: I didn't mean to belittle your post Tessa. :) I agree with it - especially in academics. I just wanted to add another (I think valid) view which applies particularly to business.
 
When someone asks what I'd like a new computer to do, I reply "Paint my house".

The biggest computer-related development in the last 35 years is the rise of the CIO.

How many people here have ever taken or given dictation? Who can read Gregg shorthand?

Here's another change: the elimination of "secretary" as a job. People (yes, men, too) went to secretarial school to learn shorthand, typing and even a smattering of bookkeeping.

Now we have "administrative assistants" who cannot do any of the above. "Typing" used to mean the ability to type at over 75 WPM with 100% accuracy (mistakes were expensive.)
 
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I know people who make highly partial database dumps to paper, just to have a physical backup in case all the automated, digital backups go bad. Never mind only a fraction of the required data is recorded on paper, and in a format quite far from what the SQL database will want anyway, but it is a modern way to use up paper and printer ink.
 
I worked for Intel back in '99-2000. Back then (as, I'm sure, for at least the previous 15 years, and likely on through today,) Intel was heavily pushing "the paperless office".

Yet, strangely, our workgroup printer seemed to be printing continuously 8/5 (8 hours a day, 5 days a week.) We'd get new technical manuals, and everyone in the dept. would print off a copy. (At least I was conscientious enough to print mine off double-sided... Manually duplexed...)

The other common 'paperless' tool were Post-It notes. Nearly every monitor was completely plastered with them. Not just personal reminders, they were often used in place of email.
 
I have to have large databooks (such as those for microcontrollers) as well as individual IC datasheets on paper in front of me when I'm working. I can skim the things on the computer, but if I really want to absorb what's there, paper seems to work best for me.

Of course, no one publishes paper databooks anymore. :(
 
One problem with going paperless is computer screens. You can't scroll around like you can look around on a paper document. When I look at some books, I have a finger bookmarking several pages and I can read all over the place in it. In fact, plain scrolling text is not even acceptable on most computers. The image is not "real time" smooth so you can't read very well (sometimes not at all) when it is moving. A book can even be read while walking. I'm not expressing this as succinctly as I would like. I guess what I really want to say is that computer screens are piss poor. :) Current design trends, such as greyed out text as used on this forum, are not helping matters and indeed are widening the rift.
 
The problem with the paperless office is that everybody likes things done differently and the software packages don't conform to everyones data flow and requirements. In business I have seen plenty of companies change how they do something to get a software package to work the way the software wants things done. If you go outside the way things are done you are back to dumping data to paper to get around it.

I guess that is what I don't like about computing in general, you can turn something easy into something hard. What can take 2 seconds with a pen and a post-it can take many minutes firing up the appropriate software and entering the data and sending it on its way. Use computers for automating the grunt work, not for everything.

The example about there are no longer secretary schools is probably true. I know the current generation of college kids all have laptops in class and spend their time taking digital notes of everything said without thinking about what is being said. I guess they do know how to type better then I do.

I like my manuals to be on paper, so I can read them sitting comfortably on the couch not squinting at a monitor.
 
I don't know, at my last job at the state we had a huge initiative to be paperless which of course led us to doing things twice (once online, and again on paper and print it out). I won't say it's the computer systems fault, more just poor management. Of course now adays I have to enter my time into 3 different systems that nobody cares about or looks at and then I'm sure somebody at several different offices has to print out the information and file it. I'm more amazed at how many systems a company can have that don't talk to each other. That provides and makes up for any paperless savings.
 
Lorne said:
It's sick I know, but I actually printed a copy of the article to read it. LOL
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Not sick - just practical. :) Not only that, you now have a copy that you can keep or pass on. Digital information is ephemeral and you have to print it on paper to preserver it. Paper has a proven history of being functional, digital media has a proven history of being inadequate.
 
Ole Juul said:
Not sick - just practical. :) Not only that, you now have a copy that you can keep or pass on. Digital information is ephemeral and you have to print it on paper to preserver it. Paper has a proven history of being functional, digital media has a proven history of being inadequate.
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It's just as Ole Juul & Chuck(G) mentioned - it's easier to look around the page when it's in hardcopy.

And like Ole Juul said, I can pass on the copy, which I did do to my 26 year old, and I then had to explain dictation and shorthand (which he thought was taking notes). Maybe I'll just print the copies for myself from now on. :)

Maybe the next generation will be more used to looking at digital copies. From what Tezza says they probably will. Maybe it'll get better as far as looking at stuff on the screen, and scrolling around them.
I sure hope so, or there'll be even more clear cutting going on Ole Juul's way.
 
Lorne said:
Maybe the next generation will be more used to looking at digital copies. From what Tezza says they probably will. Maybe it'll get better as far as looking at stuff on the screen, and scrolling around them. I sure hope so, or there'll be even more clear cutting going on Ole Juul's way.
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Yes but it's more than just getting used to looking at things on a screen. Developments have simply made it easier to be paperless.

I have a large 21 inch crisp LCD screen monitor at work. Fonts are more readable than they used to be. And everyone is connected. For example, I can get scientific papers as PDF files from journal publishers through the web (via our library). Using Abobe Acrobat I can read them on the screen, highlight bits...write electronic notes on them...(far more legible than my own handwriting), use a reference manager (Endnote) to store them locally as a PDF where I can find them, share them with others.

If I'm writing something (say a joint paper with someone) I can write it in Word, share the document with the other authors and edit it jointly using "track changes"/markup, send it off to the publisher electronically...if it's published most people will get it as a PDF just as I do others.

I don't bother buying newspapers now...I can (and do) read my local news on the web.

However, there are times when I do prefer the printed word e.g. Vintage computer manuals. It's probably because I'm not so much reading them, but rather using them for reference. There is a lot of flicking backwards and forwards going on. The physical page still seems to have the edge here, for me anyway.

Tez
 
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. . . share them with others.
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I'm sure it's a workable, likely superior, solution within your work place. But wider sharing is dubious, considering that many people don't even have a computer, or they have an older one. :) I think that is part of the problem. However, regarding the paperless office, you're bang on and it seems to be coming. The scary thing is that the change seems to have a close relationship to a decline of literacy.

I too read newspapers on the web. You can't buy real paper ones where I live. Even if I could, I like the up-to-date international connection. If I was back in the city where you can buy papers from all over the word, I still couldn't afford to buy a stack of them every day. Regardless of money, I wouldn't do that anyway.
 
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