Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Fwd: [PORT-L] The Myth of the Paperless Office
I wonder (slightly tongue-in-cheek, but not very) whether _some_ of that's a
consequence of:
a) Increasing numbers of people becoming increasingly aware of increasingly
tortuous legal matters so saving hard copies of everything in respect of
every move they make. Am I right in thinking that most, if not all, legally
binding transactions still require paper hardcopy? So if more people are
enabled to access more services then there are more legally binding
transactions made.
b) In light of (a), not trusting computers and magnetic media not to fall
over or wipe and lose critical data. (01)
So one might suggest that it isn't anything to do with computers except that
the technology has enabled greater access to more information by more
people, all of whom still need lots of hardcopy for things. (02)
But I agree, it still isn't as easy to read a long complex document if you
can't draw your own labelled hyperlinks and add your own annotations, or
spread the pages out on the floor in different arrangements. Even the basic
act of putting a 'this is where I was last' bookmark in at a certain page is
not catered for in most interfaces. I typically have a separate notepad doc
with just a page number in for lots of other documents. There's no
centralization of that in a single doc because I can't build my own
collections effectively above and beyond the paucity of the filesystem
naming arrangements. (03)
Cheers,
Peter (04)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack Park" <jackpark@thinkalong.com>
To: <ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2001 3:14 AM
Subject: [ba-unrev-talk] Fwd: [PORT-L] The Myth of the Paperless Office (05)
>
> >From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@BESTWEB.NET>
> >To: PORT-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
> >
> >That's the title of a new book. For more information see
> >
> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_1666000/1666325.stm
> >
> >Which has some interesting facts from the book:
> >
> >"In 1980, a year before the introduction of the IBM PC, world office
> >paper consumption stood at 70 million tons. By 1997, the total had grown
> >to almost 150 million tons. The upward trend has been maintained over
> >the last few years."
> >
> >This raises lots of questions about the ease of use of various
> >computer interfaces. The bottom line is that they still aren't
> >as good as good old-fashioned paper.
> >
> >John Sowa
>
> (06)