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1) The iPad--or any tablet--cannot replace paper as long as it holds on to the "walled garden" mentality. There will always be a need for specific-to-this-business functions that can't get through the approval process.
2) Paper is still a requirement for many, many legal documents. The law would have to change (and judges get a lot more technophilic) before we can *begin* to remove paper from the legal process.
3) In case people had forgotten, over 14% of US families live below the poverty line. Poverty, in the US, is a family of four living on $22,000/year. IPads-all-around is NOT going to happen anytime soon.
4) Digital documents can be *altered.* Yes, the alterations (or at least, the fact of alteration) can be detected--if you know what to look for. But some alterations are necessary. And digital documents can become corrupt. While this can happen to paper docs, we have literally *centuries* of practice with methods to avoid it with our paper docs, and with backups and such. We have no such methods for digital documents.
5) We really, really aren't tech-savvy enough to consider this on a large scale. (Insert 200 amusing office anecdotes of your choice here.) (I'll start: I still giggle over the one client who demanded we provide her with "searchable tiffs." Not "tiffs and text," not "tiffs and database;" searchable tiff files, because "that's what the other company gave me." We refrained from telling her to go back to them, and insisted on providing her with tiffs and text in separate files. If her office "goes digital," she may delete the text files & database file to "save space" and "just keep the searchable tiffs.")
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