Is the "paperless" office a pipe-dream? We have all of this fantastic computer technology and yet we still love our paper. I know that people like to have hard copies of documents, but it seems that instead of less paper there is even more. If I were in charge of things I would set goals to use say 1% less paper per year.

I think that it has saved some paper. When I go to a meeting these days, we are expected to bring our own copy of the presentation (down loaded from a site) so there's no wasted paper. A lot of the company fliers, monthly newspapers and the like now come electronically, instead of a massive printing.

A few of us at work were talking about that just yesterday. I remember 15 years ago my company was trying to go paperless. Of course, at the time it seemed like we needed even more paper.

Recently, Verizon bought my company and we received "welcome gifts" from our new overlords. A pen and a 2006 planner/calendar thing. One guy made the statement "I thought we were supposed to be going paperless. Where's my PDA?"

I could probably do my job without paper but I just can't get away from writing things down as I hear them on the phone. It seems to help me get the information straight before I begin troubleshooting. Typing it in notepad or the log, where I will ultimately be typing it anyways, doesn't seem to have the same effect. Plus, on paper the information is easy to find as it isn't behind the 75 billion different applications running on my PC that I need to replace paper.

My impression is that as personal computers became more common 15 to 20 years ago, there was an increase in paper production, mainly because it was easier to produce and in pretty formats and in large quantities. Very slowly, maybe in the last five years, has e-mail and networking has gotten better (so I can e-mail you my 100 page report), the amount is starting to decrease. But I think we are a long way from paperless.

I still find, for reasons unknown (other than I'm an old geek), that my final proofreading of an important report has to be from a paper copy, if I'm to find all the errors.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

The main difference between today and 15 to 20 years ago is that paper is now used to record information or carry information, it is not used nearly as much to convey routine information.

For example, all my bills (credit cards, loan payments etc) are emailed to me. That is routine information, so it's not printed. I go to my bank's website and pay the bills online. At work, my pay stub is emailed to me. Meeting agendas, meeting notes, all of that is electronic. It's all routine. In the past, it would have been printed, used once, and then thrown away. So, it's no longer printed.

Where paper is used is for quickly recording information - as in, taking notes in a meeting because it's fast and easy and quiet. Several people where I work have tablet PCs, and they do bring them to meetings, but the PCs are still a little too thick to fit comfortably on a conference table, so most people still take notes on paper.

Paper is also still used to carry information in situations were it's convenient. For example, it's easy for me to print an entity relationship diagram and tape it to the wall behind my computer. It's more convenient for me to do that than to alt-tab back and forth.

So the bottom line (IMHO) is that we have already made significant inroads into conservation by means of reducing paper usage. We have already reduced and nearly eliminated usage of paper for routine things where before we would print, look at once, and then throw away.

In the future, I think we'll make further progress in reducing paper use in recording and carrying information. In particular, when tablet PCs are as thin and light as a pad of paper, we'll see them used even more.

It's taken a while, but there seems to have been a transition from paper documents to electronic documents here at NASA. Time was, the copiers were constantly breaking down from overuse (and we were being yelled at for using them instead of getting tech pubs to make copies, as we were supposed to do for any nontrivial job). Now I only occasionally see a copier being used, and all of my guiding documentation is on my hard drive (though I still print stuff out when I want to take a good hard look at it).

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Not only "old geeks" do that. I still always print out the draft report and go over it that way. Seems easier to catch the errors and easier to make quick notes and corrections. Also more comfortable to read.

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Earth First! We'll mine the rest later.

"Every time I hear we're going to a paperless society, I get another form to fill out."

Richard Biggs as Doctor Stephen Franklin in Babylon 5

As far as architecture is concerned, paper will never go out of style. We've changed the dominant format of paper printing several times, but the fact remains, unless you wanna outfit the grunts in the field with computers with autocad and tell clients they need a $5000 software to view their material, paper's in the construction industry to stay. Computer files on our end represent product. Paper copies can be distributed far and wide, but the actual datafiles are intellectual property, like master prints of old.

Internally, our archive process is moving from paper to electronic data, but the day to day work of permit applications, memoranda, meeting minutes, preliminary sketches, contracts, transmittals, county review comments, all that is still paper.

Only Howard County in Maryland is so far considering a pure digital permit submission process. Applications can be made online, and drawings submitted as PDF documents via email, but that system is at least another year from full deployment and is extremely experimental.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

I use much less paper at work than I did 5 or 10 years ago, so maybe it is not paperless but will be less paper. There are times when I want a paper copy.

The next step in paper reduction will come when people routinely use multiple monitors to work from and can switch back and forth by just turning the head or shifting the eyes. Some alpha geeks do this now, but most people still work from a single monitor.

A lot of technical conferences have gone to putting proceedings on a CD and giving that to the participants rather than printing huge books with every paper or presentation.

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

We are largely paperless, all outgoing mail, faxes etc. are stored electronically, incoming mail is scanned and shredded. The only paper most of our paralegals have is titledeeds and missive letters. I'm more of a Luddite, but have far less paper than 5 years ago.

i tell you what, when i download a paper of significance to my work, the first thing i do is print it out. sooooo much easier to flip through pages, make notes, etc. when i'm holding it. we give out paper copies for all of our presentations to any attendees, as well. i don't see "paperless" as a viable concept for quite some time.

taks

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goodbye richard pryor :(...

GM attempted to go paperless several years ago by 86ing their engineering drawings.....and for the most part they succeeded. But reams of paper (literally) still circulates the building. Xerox has no worries just yet.

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"It was a crime of passion! Not premeditated dentistry!"

The world will go paperless when I can have paperless reading material in the bathroom (and no, I'm not bringing the laptop).

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

PDA? Or one of those infamous little digital book things?

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Huh. Paperless. What's that?

One of my portfolios at the college is our mass communications system. The Admissions Service alone prints and mails an average of 55,000 - 65,000 separate documents a year, handled by my team. We'll be doing a bulk job of about 20,000 tax forms over a three day stretch next month.

All I can say is, thank goodness for the licking machine.

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And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

For engineering drawings, paperless works about 50% of the time. Small, simple parts are usually easy to understand on a monitor.

But when one moves to large assemblies, even projectors don't afford the flexibility of seeing the entire assembly at once while allowing for details such as sections, close-up views, etc., to be clearly seen. Typically once the drawing gets over D size, paper is a lot easier to work with.

Of course the nice thing about having all drawings, specifications, operating procedures, etc., exclusively in an electronic format is configuration control. Properly administered the system will allow only the current revisions to displayed.

Whereas with paper, there's always the temptation to keep a copy in one's desk/file cabinet/toolbox for "convenience" and other shaky excuses. I wish I had a dollar for every component/subassembly/final assembly that had to be scrapped/reworked because someone used their "personal copy" of a manufacturing document that was obsolete by various revision levels.

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

GM owns Xerox, they better not go completely paperless!

Less than 80% of the United States has telephones. Just over 50% have a computer. Of those 50%, not everyone has the internet. How you gonna communicate without putting it on paper?

Sides, we do away with paper and I'm looking for ANOTHER job!

I can't begin to tell you how much paper we go through in a day at Sydney Airport, but as a law enforcement agency there's little choice. Everything must be in hard form.

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The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

Given the amountof paper on my desk, near my desk, under my desk...at work, I don't see it going paperless anytime soon.

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"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." — Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

441!!!! :)

Paperless office? Never!
(at least not while I am employed in the photocopier industry! ... (Modern digital machines can take a paper document, scan it, turn it into a PDF and then email it for you, so I suppose that helps))

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The meek will inherit the earth ... the rest of us will go to the stars.

We're largely paperless... we have hardcopies of contracts and site work orders.
That's pretty much it, interenally. Of course, we do have all manner of government forms we haven't found a way to get out of. And Qwest uses a shipping company to get us our bills (one of which is 3 inches thick, printed both sides)

In the not too distant future, all of our internal information flow will be paperless. I have a 4-drawer filing cabinet. In just about any other telecommunications company, I'd have 3 - as it is, I have a drawer and a half left to go - and it contains all my PUC, tariff, and contract information. As well as a change of clothes.

I carry around a JumpDrive just in case. 256MB of pure love.

lol - waaaay too small. I tote a small 40Gig USB hard drive...Pager, two phones, digital camera, VHF two-way, and a multitool.

What, no hatchet?

(I bet I'm going to get asked to explain that one...)

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

I am NOT the white knight.

Besides, the Axe is in the car.

Ba-wha? White knight?

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

No phones after 9/11 - personal rule. I've got the digital camera with video, though. I don't know how to use it, so don't get excited.

Through the Looking Glass

Ah. Gotcha.

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

No problem.. I THINK the camera has video... but I much prefer stills. I use it at accident scenes, etc - take pics for later training. I use the SLR for taking real photos - trains, mostly.

I need the phones for work, same for the pager

And EVERYBODY should carry a multitool. They are just too convenient for words.