The New York Times has published an article about the demise of paper. The article suggests that the change is not only imminent but it is already here. The usual approach of quoting experts is used in an attempt to show that paper is gone and that only wasteful employees are still printing.
The biggest expert is the family of an engineering director at google and the chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The latter however sort of diminishes the general upbeat article by admitting that scanned books are not as pleasant as the old fashioned alternative.
So yes we like paperless tickets and nobody understands why we need to kill forests to print telephone books (but not many seem to be complaining about the Ikea catalogue) but does this mean we are paperless? Looking around my desk I think not. Maybe I am not representative. Looking around the office I still don’t think so. Maybe we are not representative? Looking around the places I live and hang out – I still don’t think so…
Somehow the paperless office still has not made it. It never did. And I doubt that it ever will. Yes, lots of people are prepared to read books on their palms but not all (read excellent article on this here). Lets face it, paper is here to stay. It simply has the best traits…
The article is not all bad though and it does bring up the environmental issues involved with changing from paper to all the electronic gadgets.
Others who have commented on the article are Question Technology, Treehugger and LifeHacker