Quote:
Originally Posted by bill_mchale
Steve, you mentioned white boards earlier... and I agree they are great, but they have their limitations. The first is that while many offices have them, many of the other places that business gets done (Like say the local diner) do not have them. Further, they don't even approach being a permanent record. In some respects, the napkin in the diner has advantages over the white board.
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That particular perception of the paper as "permanent record", as the final destination for "important information" might have shifted in favour of electronic version.
When was the last time that you have received good, old, handwritten, "snail-mail" letter? Or written one?
The similar logic is applied to our day-to-day work. These days, practically nobody is rushing to print stuff before the deadline... because we do not send paper documents any more. More and more, the "final" version of the document is its electronic version. It is up to the consumer to print it, if he wants to do so.
The pressure on paper as a medium lies in its inadequacy to serve as a "permanent record". Paper slips for credit card transactions... is it PRACTICAL to keep them all? Even when we want to keep the "paper trail", more and more we need to aggregate the important data and commit to paper just the essential stuff.
There is nothing wrong with the paper as medium... as long as you ignore how much of that stuff ends up in your shelves, on your tables or elsewhere in your vicinity. And how annoyed I get when I have to browse through a (dusty, always dusty) pile of "important stuff" that seemed worthy of printing some time ago... and now has to go to shredder first, then to recycle bin.