Business Week made a prediction of the paperless office in 1975. This term refers to automation making paper redundant for routine office tasks. In the early days of the personal computing industry, this was used as a strong selling point. In reality, computers have not reduced or eliminated paper but instead have made larger stacks of it on desks and the need to purchase filing cabinets with greater capacity.

While digital media has certain advantages over paper, our generation has been thoroughly conditioned to prefer paper as a medium for conveying information. Paper is also easier to read than text on a computer monitor or PDA. It has better colours and the image is sharper (not to mention less eye strain). Digital media is, however, more convenient because you can perform searches, create multiple bookmarks and comments, and its much more portable.

For example, BibleWorks is a software package that has “112 Bible translations in 30 languages, 14 original language texts with 18 morphology databases, 12 Greek lexicons and dictionaries, 5 Hebrew lexicons and dictionaries, plus 30 practical reference works”. Try carrying all of those printed books around. A notebook computer can store all of this in about 5 GB. Obviously, digital media is the way to go. The only thing that needs to be improved is the user interface and people need to be conditioned to accept it.

There are transitions from paper to digital media. The most common one is Adobe Acrobat. PDF documents are everywhere and they’re great for print publishers making digital versions of their work. The problem is that its not convenient reading them on a computer monitor. If the text is designed with columns, you have to scroll up and down the page to read an article. Its not really as convenient as reading a top-down scrolling web page.

Xerox PARC has also created electronic paper. This is a design technology which imitates ink on paper. Its a thin plastic electronic display which is flexible like paper. There are millions of small beads which can be rotated to show white or black. The image is written by applying a voltage to it which then rotates the beads to the desired colour and is permanent until it’s changed. While this technology may be expensive, it’s very useful for people who require easy access to large amounts of black and white documents and portability, such as architects.

We’re still a long way from paperless offices but it is a vision which will be realized by future generations, especially by those who are environmentally conscious.

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