Discussion on:
Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?

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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
CobraA1 15th Nov
CAN we go paperless?

Yes. Absolutely. No question about it. We have the technology. We have the ability. I do everything possible to keep everything I do paperless.

ARE we paperless?

No. We're not. I still have to deal with a lot of paper from people and companies that, to this day, refuse to put their stuff online. I still have to deal with printing, scanning, and *shudders* faxing.

We are the most technologically advanced civilization in the world - why do I still have to deal with stubborn people who demand paper? And why are businesses of any description still using faxes?

It's 2011, not 1991. Get with the program, people. Let me be paperless if I want X(.

We should be a paperless society, but sadly we're not. Not there yet sad.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
techboy_z 21st Nov
@CobraA1 It's called freedom. Quit trying to impose your hatred of paper on the rest of us. I don't want to need a device and power source to read, when all I need is a printed page. PERIOD. Get over it.

I"m for "Not there yet, and hope we never will be".
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
Lerianis10 22nd Nov
@techboy_z

Why not? The fact is that sometimes, people need a kick in the butt to stop being wasteful (ala with the CFL vs. incandescent debate) with energy, resources, etc.

We need to start realizing that non-hard copies of stuff are usually good enough. Just printing them out or handing them to a judge makes them legally admissible in a court of law, so that throws one common argument against going paperless out the window.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
CobraA1 22nd Nov
@techboy_z It's not hatred, it's efficiency. Paper wastes space and wastes time.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
techboy_z 22nd Nov
@Lirianis and Cobra: Efficiency? Doing my reading electronically wastes more energy than reading my paperbacks. I don't have to recharge my books for a reread. And I don't have to mine metals and make plastics for a new computer/tablet/e-reader every couple years. You should be made aware that trees are a renewable resource and printed copies that last decades are much lighter on the environment compared to the materials for your e-reader, the power to build it, ship it, and continually use it.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
CobraA1 Updated - 22nd Nov
"Doing my reading electronically wastes more energy than reading my paperbacks."

With a proper eBook reader using electronic ink, a single charge lasts a month or more. You'll likely use less electricity reading a book on a Kindle than producing a book in a printing press.

And I wasn't talking about efficiency in terms of electrical use anyways, I was talking about it in terms of productivity. I can be far more productive with electronic devices than with paper.

And I really wasn't talking about ebooks anyways - I don't even own an ebook reader.

"You should be made aware that trees are a renewable resource and printed copies that last decades"

99% of what I do on paper doesn't need to last decades. It's mostly just procedure stuff that I wish would go away anyways.

"are much lighter on the environment compared to the materials for your e-reader, the power to build it, ship it, and continually use it."

Can you back this up with facts?

As far as the materials go, I plan on recycling, should I get an ebook reader.

As far as building it and shipping it goes, those are one time costs. Not to mention books have shipping costs too! You need to ship EVERY BOOK. With an ebook reader, you only need to ship the device. The books are downloaded, not shipped.

As far as using it goes, a proper ebook reader using electronic ink uses only a tiny bit of electricity.

Not to mention that I'm not talking about books and e-readers anyways. I'm talking about forms, procedures, checklists, etc. Productivity stuff.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
Fat Albert 1 21st Nov
@CobraA1

If we have to ask, then we're not
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
lehnerus2000 15th Nov
It's a good thing that it hasn't come to pass.

Once it happens it will be the "beginning of the end" of our civilization.
All it would take is one "once-in-a-100,000-years" solar storm and we can kiss our electronic data goodbye.

Allegedly NASA has reels of magnetic tape, which have data on them, but nobody can retrieve the info because the machines that could read them are all gone.

Show me a 2000 year old HDD, which still has readable data on it and I might change my mind.
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NASA and paperless
Unkk Updated - 17th Nov
When the Apollo era J2 engines were built, all the data was stored on paper (mostly lost), punch cards and magnetic tape. The new Space Launch System uses a modified J2-X engine. Necessity, ingenuity and panic and do a lot to overcome obstacles.
Our government and military as well as many businesses from banks, aerospace firms, newspapers and manufacturers invested heavily in computers back when they took up whole buildings. Even though they have data on old material those entities still operate just fine (except for the government part, but that's a different discussion).
Can we go paperless, yes... will we, no.
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Long live PAPER
bonespiel@... 21st Nov
Not everyone can afford the technology to go paperless. That's what gives the printed media sources alive. Long live PAPER!
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
Lerianis10 22nd Nov
@bonespiel@...

Can't they? With all due respect, a total book is about 400kb's in size if it is less than 80 pages and has no images.

With those things, it goes to about 4 MB's in size, properly saved as a .pdf or .odt file.

A USB Flash drive can be 32GB's in size today.... that means you can save about..... 8000 full-size books with images on your SSD drive. Simply put, we have the technology to go totally paperless, it's just that some people 'fear' not having a hard copy of things.
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Long live PAPER
bonespiel@... 21st Nov
Oops typo. Keeps them alive.
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Paper will be around for years.
rjm56 21st Nov
The shift is slow but getting there. Walk through enough company buildings and it's still around. The move is making paper a more short term use but walk around most legal groups and bingo, paper rules still. Of course the end of toilet paper is no where in sight.
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Paper is King!
TAPhilo 21st Nov
Once the legal system has gone completely paperless and has a foolproof method that fools can understand we will be paperless - till that happens Paper is KING!
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Paperless?
LadyGray 21st Nov
We'll go paperless when everyone returns to writing on clay tablets. Electronic media will never be as reliable as written or printed records.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
tkejlboom 21st Nov
@LadyGray

Exactly, electronic media was overwhelmingly more reliable than paper at its inception, and it hasn't made a lick of difference in the intervening 40 years.
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I'm a fan of paperless, but some paper will always be needed.
shawkins 21st Nov
I have cut down on paper use tremendously over the past 10 years and especially so in the last 3 years. I get most all bills, insurance statements and financial statements online and store them on my computer (with a backup of course). I've also gone above and beyond at work, discouraging use of paper when the same documents are available on our intranet. I figure my employer has saved about 200 cases of paper a year as a result.

Still, some things need to be on paper. Estate documents come to mind. Tax returns can be stored digitally but I insist on having a hard copy in storage. Certain books that are important to the owner need to be hard copy. If the lights go out, we are going to want the paper available for that sort of thing. Simple as that.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
tkejlboom 21st Nov
@shawkins

Primary mechanism of fraud in the digital era? Check fraud. Paper.

Primary mechanism of identity theft in the digital era? Paper. Seminars, mail fraud, burglary.

When they raided Enron and WorldCom, the executives were shredding paper. All the lies the those executives told. Paper.

Paper is not magical. It does not reject falsehoods or rebuff fraud. In fact, it often creates a false sense of security, worse than if it wasn't there at all.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
Lerianis10 22nd Nov
@tkejlboom

Good point.... paper records can be (if done by a master or even apprentice forger) altered to make ANYTHING appear different than it actually is.
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Less Paper not paperless!
STAN113 21st Nov
Major delays in the paperless society start at the Governmental level. Just think of the lobbying by paper companies to get governments to maintain requirements for paper documents. I can scan and save all my tax related documents to electronic form but the government wants to see actual paper documents to support every transaction. They use the argument that they don't trust a facsimile. Their argument is weak because through computerization we can create fake physical (print) documents that would pass their muster. The paper companies have a lot riding on required paper documents.
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Contributr
RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
christopher_jablonski 21st Nov
Hi Larry,

I'm ready!

-Chris J
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
Willnott 21st Nov
Although "hard copy" still has challenges of standardization, "soft copy" remains far more challenged in that arena. Until data files can be standardized for access and display, for not allowing "creative editing", and can be stored securely for years (if necessary), there will remain a demand for alternate methods of data storage and display.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
Lerianis10 21st Nov
@Willnott

True, the editing thing is a big issue, which is why I still keep offline hard copies of all my online receipts.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
tkejlboom 21st Nov
@Lerianis10

Riiiiiiigggghhht. You can prove you didn't edit the hardcopy before printing how?
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
Lerianis10 22nd Nov
@tkejlboom

Good point.... after thinking on this subject more, you have a point in that hard copies can be altered just as easily as digital records.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
CyberZombie 21st Nov
Paperless for at least 5 years (save for books, where it's 2 years.) All bills online. Electronic books. Prior to my iPhone, iPad, I used my laptop for everything.

We still get a few circulars and CC offers in the mail...gotta have something to keep the recycler bin occupied.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
bb_apptix 21st Nov
In many cases, there's no subsitute for a hard copy. "paperless" is not ideal.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
Lerianis10 22nd Nov
@bb_apptix

With all due respect, a hard copy can be lost/damaged/etc. just as easily as a 'soft' or electronic copy can.
My cousin who did data logistics for the police for a time said that they were ALWAYS losing hard copies of police reports and other evidence, when they NEVER lost the electronic copies of those things.

He finally made the detectives scan in their notebooks and everything else using scanners at their desks and saving everything in a .pdf file, that was locked so that only they or an commanding officer could edit it.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
Aerowind 21st Nov
I'm already completely paperless, apart from a few necessities (you know, like insurance cards). You know, unless I'm applying for yet another drastically dated mail in rebate (Seriously, why Newegg, why?). Other than that, I do everything electronically.

That said, we're not there yet at all. The sheer amount of paper used (and frankly, wasted) at my job is horrific. We print stuff that there's honestly no reason to print, and hell, that nobody even uses anymore. We just print it off every week and file it away.
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Storage issues
Flyer22 21st Nov
A lot of people don't have a floppy drive anymore. What if somebody at your office had done an important paper 10 years ago that you need now? Or what if there's a legal issue of some sort? It's a big hassle to migrate documents to new forms of electronic storage.

Whereas, with even regular acid paper, those files remain accessible and readable for decades on end.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
Lerianis10 22nd Nov
@Flyer22

With all due respect, how often does that come up? Personally, whenever I tell a company that they should move from X to X, we go around gathering up ALL the old data recording tech they used and whatever it used to record data and transfer it to the NEW medium verbatim.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
SiO2 23rd Nov
@Lerianis10 I'm right with you on that one, but it only works well with an already-digital or at least electronic medium.

One can only imagine the fun that would ensue when hundreds of years of legal documents held by solicitors for example (I'm in the UK) have to be transferred. Good quality print can be digitised with OCR but anything else has to be stored as a digital copy of an image and is then really hard to index and verify. Factoring the cost of doing that into the equation of going paperless means either keeping legacy originals somewhere or scrapping data.
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What will historians reference?
vmanes 21st Nov
As noted above, reading digital files stored today is not guaranteed to possible in the future, both because of file formats and media types. Also, the archival nature of digital media is not a certain as quality printed material. John Dvorak wrote a good column on this topic a couple years ago: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2341562,00.asp .

Besides, there are just some places where I want to read, but I refuse to take an electronic device in there. You know where I mean.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
orio195 21st Nov
"paper-reduced" is probably more apt. Hope we can get closer to there.

At this point, what will be the biggest technological improvement we can make to further cut paper usage?

Or, a similar question: What items cause the highest paper consumption?
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
Ginevra 21st Nov
Transient documents whose usefulness is of limited duration, such as bills, should absolutely go paperless. Any information whose value will last a long time, however, should be printed on a medium which will also last a long time (and not require electricity to access.) Scientific knowledge and artistic works should be put into the most permanent and accessible analog forms possible, whether that's paper, celluloid film, vinyl records, or some other physical medium, with multiple copies stored in the safest manner available.

There may always be a few transient uses for which it will be difficult to shake paper, as well...I've tried using electronic sticky-note type applications, for example, and it's just not the same as a Post-It.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
just.a.guy 21st Nov
Not there yet. I tried to go paperless by contacting all the companies sending
me junk paper mail. I found out that the post office has contracts with certain
companies to deliver their ads to all boxes in an area. There is no way to stop
delivery of those documents. I thought that the USPS could be innovative, and
scan the documents and deliver them by email. Not possible! The USPS is restricted by law. It cannot change how a document is delivered. It cannot
even look into such new technologies. The volume of physical mail that
is being sent has lessened with the use of e-billing. Even Senators and Rep's
use email. We just have to "wait" until the older (in mind) generation passes-on.
With people living longer, it is going to take some time.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
normedw 22nd Nov
I've been hearing this since the 1960's!
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
jkohut 22nd Nov
We have made significant strides and we are heading in the direction of being significantly paperless. As with most issues today, there doesn't have to be an all or nothing mentality and having one shows a lack of intelligence (mirrored currently by our lawmakers) when people feel the need to have an all or nothing mentallity.
People still use stone tablets (for grave markers)! Why, because they get the job done. They will likely always be a need for some paper, but reducing where possible makes sense to most people and our younger generations are learning to do without paper with an ever increasing ease.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
windozefreak 22nd Nov
Too many variables and needs exist that prevents a completely paperless world. I'm not sure we will ever reach this stage!
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
looneytunzrus@... 22nd Nov
Paper is more reliable.
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Paper is not dying anytime soon
bill.tkach@... 22nd Nov
The problem with things that are not paper, are:

1) that they consume energy, constantly. You can put up a paper billboard and see it at least 12 hours a day, without using any power. It lasts for a long time, and rarely needs repairs. Repair is as easy as repapering it.
2) Electronics are anything but environmental. I mean, do your really think the environmental footprint of creating an iPAD is less than say 30000 sheets of paper... roughly the same cost. I'm pretty sure the plastic, metals, battery, chemicals, factory upkeep, component manufacturing, mining, that are required to put together this piece of equipment, are more detrimental to the environment than some paper. At least paper is easily recycled. iPads... I'm not so sure. most of the components don't easily separate.
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
HypnoToad72 24th Nov
They're trying...

The cool part is, but the time they get "there" the EMP will hit and then we'll all be begging for paper again...
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"There" is not a realistic destination, but we're headed in that direction
cshunt312 26th Nov
We may not be paperLESS but there is absolutely LESS paper. I can remember years ago people complaining that new technologies had increased paper production and consumption, but I haven't heard that complaint in a long time. I may not be representative, but I know my life has much less paper in it: I get virtually all my bills electronically and pay them all online. I receive almost no catalogs and only one paper magazine (which I also get digitally). I get all my news digitally. I rarely ever print anything. There's almost no paper in my office. With a Nook and a Kindle I don't know if I'll ever buy a paper book again...
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RE: Great Debate: The paperless society: Are we there yet?
nacourtney 28th Nov
It's funny that the guy stating paper is going the way of the dinosaur, the last time I checked all these tech companies that sue each other still have to go into a court of law with paperwork to back up their claims of patent infringement, even with a video showing some feature they still need to have paperwork that details in writing what the patent is for or does. The lawyers themselves go in with boxes of paperwork to support their claims or to counter sue and support their claims.

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