The Myth of the Paperless Office 340
AdamBa writes: "The New Yorker is running an
interesting review
of the book
'The Myth of the Paperless Office', also discussing
'Scrolling Forward'. Read
it and the ever-informative
Malcolm Gladwell will
explain why paper enables collaborative work much better than computers do, why a messy desk is a sign of productivity, and give a little background on the inventor of the Dewey Decimal System to boot."
Is there an online version..... (Score:4, Funny)
Or is someone just taking the myth ?
Re:Is there an online version..... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Is there an online version..... (Score:4, Informative)
The next generation portable, PAPER! (Score:5, Funny)
Batteries
Network connection
Power plug
Monitor
Keyboard or mouse (pen though)
Paper is about the most reliable form of interoffice communication there is. You can take it with you anywhere, you can read it anytime you want. It's lightweight, and neatly folds up into a smaller space. If you need security, paper can be burned or shredded. If you get really bored, you can make airplanes out of paper.
You want games? Paper has some of the most ancient and popular games ever. Tic tac toe, connect the dots to name a few. Paper even has an intuitive interface for making your own games. In fact it's so easy a toddler can do it!
Paper in volume can be used to prop up a montior to eye level that doesn't have a stand. Have a table with a leg that's a little short? Easy enough, some folded paper under the affected leg will make that table stand on all 4 legs like new again.
Girls love paper! Write a love letter, send a card, these will allways get you more brownie points with your signifigant other than electronic methods.
Paper has been used for thousands of years, without paper, we wouldn't have the great teaching of our forfathers. Our constitution was written on paper!
Have you hugged your paper today?
Re:The next generation portable, PAPER! (Score:3, Interesting)
Paper is generally much better for reading, due to resolution and "handling" but not for much else. Often when composing I print out my documents, grab a couple of pens and edit that way. (Even with source code) But for everything else it is all electronic.
Re:The next generation portable, PAPER! (Score:3, Informative)
No.
Not if you are a citizen of the United States of America, anyway. Our constitution was written on parchment, not paper. Parchment is made from animal skin. It has historically been used for important documents because it is considered more durable than paper (and floppy disks).
Re:The next generation portable, PAPER! (Score:2)
Re:The next generation portable, PAPER! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The next generation portable, PAPER! (Score:3, Interesting)
Important documents in those days were always "engrossed" on long-lasting parchment once the final version of the text was hammered out.
Re:The next generation portable, PAPER! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The next generation portable, PAPER! (Score:4, Interesting)
They test the effectiveness of paper shredders.
The ones you get in office supply stores suck. Only 1/4 inch wide cuts. The real shredders cut about 1/2 millimeter, and cross shred 4 millimeters. You end up with big dust....
Re:The next generation portable, PAPER! (Score:2)
Don't like paper? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The next generation portable, PAPER! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's lightweight, and neatly folds up into a smaller space.
You must have some different kind of paper than I do. Either that or you don't read very much. Paper is bulky, heavy and a real pain to cart around.
Bits are really lightweight and you can fit an unbelievably large number of them into a very tiny space. My e-Book weighs less about three pounds, takes up the same space as one paperback and carries the content of 15-20 books. I can fit a few technical references, all of the documentation to the projects I'm currently working on, a bunch of the source code and a few novels besides all in that tiny space.
Any then there's my laptop, with its 32GB HDD...
Re:The next generation portable, PAPER! (Score:2)
Re:The next generation portable, PAPER! (Score:2)
(Actually, that`s a misnomer. Bond paper is actually mostly made out of old rags).
Military application (Score:2)
If you get shot paper can be used (in a pinch) as a field dressing.
drafts (Score:4, Insightful)
We just need better tools (Re:drafts) (Score:4, Interesting)
There are tools for this, but they just aren't that commonly used. The best one I've found is the full version of adobe acrobat. You can print just about anything to a PDF, and then use Acrobat to draw on it (circle things, draw arrows, highlight, etc) and include comments on anything you draw. There is even an option to create a second document with all of your comments that makes a great checklist for the next revision. PDFs are also common enough that I can send these marked up documents to just about anybody and expect them to be able to see and read my comments.
Again, I don't think we'll get to the paperless office in my lifetime, but we could get a lot closer using the tools that are available.
Re:drafts (Score:3, Interesting)
My job here is to create paper and electronic forms for our internal use. It's well known in the industry that whenever you add printers or computers to an office, cut sheet paper usage increases. In the US, there's been a decline in roll-stock paper usage over the last 10 years, but cut sheet paper (the kind you buy 500 per ream and stick in your printer) has been nothing but growth.
As much as I'd like to make all of our forms electronic, it doesn't make sense to. It's easier for the guys driving the logging trucks and forklifts to have paper checklists, it's sensible to buy large quantities of pads of paper (instead of having the users order them 10 at a time, which they WILL do if we don't), and it's a real pain to have to open up an electronic version of the "while you were out" slip compared to the ease of using a paper version.
Add name tags, envelopes, certificates, and calendars to the mix, and it's pretty obvious that paper's here to stay for a long, long, long time.
Re:drafts (Score:5, Insightful)
However, where I work we use Sharepoint Portal Server. I upload documents to the website. Reviewers add comments, can see comments other people have added and can even chip in or reply to any of those comments. I review the comments, update the document (and reupload still keeping all the comments), close comments, etc.
Works great for me. I'd like to see paper do that.
Re:drafts (Score:2)
This is so backward (Score:2)
So how is it that the average free software project integrates the work of hundreds of people from all around the globe who may never see each other? Mystery of mystery to the average Word user I'm sure.
Crappy propriatory software is the problem not the solution. Know what happens when you pass out 20 coppies of a "document" at my office? You get a ream of garbage, that's what. Just try sorting through all of it by hand. Why not set up a freaking web page and send a link to ask for comments? Wow, you might even recieve them in the mail and talk to the folks that sent them if you don't understand. If you can't incorporate them into your work, your work is not well organized. Where I work, people have to print everything out because the viewing programs are not well designed. Of course, it's hard to look at a large drawing with M$'s single virtual screen! Hell, it's hard to even organize your work into piles without virtual screens and desktops. Bleh, the "server" to share work? Give me a break, it's been set up into individual home directories with no read permisions that can't be changed, but that's to be expected for an OS that does not have user, group, world file permisions built into the file system and kernel. The rest of the "share" space is chronically disorganized so that all sorts of duplicate junk clutters and clogs it up. Can it be worse? Yes, add Outlook and Access to it. Oultook XP can't handle text anymore and most people are flinging around word docs that they then print and walk a further distance to the printer than to the sender's desk.
Fundamental design flaws made to protect an obsolete marketing model have led to all that, and it's given people a very false impression. My computers at home never crash, yet look at all the posts about how reliable paper is. Paper in my house is something the cat might eat. The computers, running debian and red hat are up 24/7. It's hard for people to imagine things beyond their crappy M$ desktop, and they are so oppressed by the thing at work they don't even want to look at one at home. Should we be supprised when people who look at the 10 lines of text they can read on a doc displayed by word go and print the thing out? Should we be supprised that people who feel like they have to print all of their mail consider email a pain? They think this because they have inadequate tools and don't know there is better stuff in the world.
My latest experience (Score:3, Interesting)
They never gave me a clear reason for this. All I can think of is that the big bosses don't trust computers. But this is a web design company. Go figure.
What about collaboration software? (Score:2)
Paperless PHB (Score:5, Funny)
When he got an email, he would print it out, then scan it, so that he could store the image in a document management system.
Re:Paperless PHB (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Paperless PHB (Score:2)
Both parties involved will both have email available to them.
I feel like replacing their PC's with etch-a-sketch's and photocopiers. Hey! Monday is April Fool's!!
Re:Paperless PHB (Score:2)
Re:Paperless PHB (Score:2)
Since I showed her how to save a webpage picture (right-click, save image as...), she practically worships me. Too bad she`s a dog.
Re:Paperless PHB (Score:2)
Kintanon
Aircraft Controllers (Score:2, Informative)
Each stick represents an aircraft (with people on board).
Controllers have a culture of *not* dropping the sticks.
That means, at all times, someone is responsible for the stick (sorry, aircraft with passengers).
To this day it is hard to replicate that kind of failsafe reliablity with a computer Object.
Paper is "RAW" (Score:2)
Having to use a complicated tool chews up wetware cycles that are needed to be creative. Once it's time to formalize something, then it goes into the computer. But for drafts, paper, ink, black/white board, chalk/markers.
I also notice that I take better notes in meetings longhand than if I try to type them into my laptop. The notebook has all sorts of userful info, but notes_on_some_meeting.txt is usually two or three sentences about some peripheral issue, and if those sentences make any sense to me later, I'm surprised.
Benefits of paperless offices (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine a corporation in the same situation. Gathering statistics on demographics and product sales would be too time consuming to be cost effective. By moving to a digital system for all of that data, real-time information can be called up on products and services.
Microsoft is one of the companies who is really using this type of technology to its full potential. If you read, "Business @ The Speed of Thought" by Bill Gates you'll really get a sense of how this can benefit businesses. Want to know why Linux won't succeed in the consumer world? Microsoft knows too much about the market it's dealing in. Linux would never stand a chance. Want to know how Linux could succeed in the enterprise space? Develop robust and effective knowledge-management software. The use of large-scale servers and databases, combined with data-mining software on Linux systems could easily make Linux the #1 enterprise OS.
MS definitely does that right. (Score:2)
Fault MS for many things, but their entire Office Suite is pretty cool. The apps inter-communicate pretty well. I realize people are going to tell me I'm wrong and share their boo hoo stories about problems that arose from it. Before you do that, I never said it was perfect. Are there problems with it? Sure, why not. But there are benefits to the way MS Products inter-operate.
Take Internet Explorer, for example. If I highlight an area of a web page and do a copy, pasting it into Notepad will dump the text into Notepad. If I paste that exact same data in Front Page 2000, then it draws that HTML, as opposed to just giving me the text view. If I copy something that has been formatted with Word into a message in Outlook, it'll retain the formatting. There's a lot of things that MS did to Office to help each tool of it inter-operate. Sometimes things don't quite come out like you'd expect, but for the most part it's pretty easy to move from one Office App to another and do what you want to do with it.
It took a lot of work to get the programs to inter-operate this way, and I certainly appreciate the effort MS put into it. Though I agree that it could definitely be improved, I think MS deserves credit for making Office extremely useful instead of making it a challenge to use. There's nobody in my office that knows how to use Word, but can't or won't try to use PowerPoint. If you've ever watched a Photoshop-illterate person try to do something simple like open a
Leveraging Existant Resources (Score:4, Interesting)
In many ways, this seems to be a rather effective leveraging of the visual cortex as an information processing system. In most (of our) computers, the video processor is probably the second most powerful processor in the system after the CPU. I would guess that the visual cortex is in the top five "coprocessors" in the brain (with presumably the thing that maintains consciencesness [sp?] first, and with the brain stem and the part that controls motion somewhere in the top five as well). So by leveraging the spacial visual processing power of the visual cortex, we can "offload" a bunch of organizational stuff from our consciousness to a seperate processor.
Just my two cents.
Re:Leveraging Existant Resources (Score:3, Interesting)
The visual cortex is probably the #1 "coprocessor". The visual cortex covers aproximately 20% of the human brain ref1 [ucdavis.edu]. And by some estimates, up to 40% of the human brain overall is devoted to image processing ref2 [ohiou.edu].
Post-It Notes. (Score:5, Insightful)
"They go back to their offices and jot down comments in the margin, taking advantage of the freedom offered by the informality of the handwritten note."
Oh, man, is this true. I work as a web developer at $MAJOR_CORPORATION, and yet I have Post-It Notes and project comps scattered around my desk at all times. Why? Because a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet or even one of those goofy Post-It Notes programs just doesn't cut it for free-form drawing or scribbed notes like train schedules, phone numbers or Linux commands like "cat
I cannot draw a picture of a web page with "menu goes here" and "content goes here" on a computer without a pen tablet. I can, however, draw it out on a piece of paper or a whiteboard and then show it to my boss, who will inevitably interrupt with "No, the menu goes here" while drawing an arrow on my comp. That comp with the arrow then meanders its way back to my desk. The computer doesn't even factor in until we are ready to produce a working HTML comp of the page, which is many steps later in the process.
I also cannot live without Post-It Notes. There is simply no better, faster way to scribble something random down in a place where it can stare you in the face all day. The funny thing is that I'm relatively young, and I've grown up with computers -- yet I still print things out to read and remember them, as well as to show them to other people. Paper may be inefficent, and it may be harder to keep track of than computer documents, but the benefit comes in its flexibility (arrow-drawing in my example) and its easy input method (pick up a pen, scribble something down, attach to closest vertical surface.) Input methods for traditional computers are still awkward, and PDA's are getting better, but you still can't hang 15 Palm Pilots up on your monitor with a different sentence on each one.
Do I think computers will eventually lessen our dependence on paper? Absolutely. I burn through a lot less paper than my parents, and I'm sure that when I have kids, they will think my Post-It Note addiction to be strange. Do I think computers are there yet? No. PDA's and tablet PC's will make this more of a reality, but we are always going to want something that doesn't run on a battery and doesn't require any "handwriting recognition" other than our own eyes. Paper has served us for thousands of years, and technology hasn't advanced enough for us to condemn it yet.
Actually, paper does suck for some apps. (Score:2)
LV
Idiots. Luddites. Same difference. (Score:3, Interesting)
But maybe I'm being too cynical. Maybe M$ makes it too hard for people, hell, if I had to run Word every time I wanted to scribble a note, I'd want to chop down a tree and felt some paper too. Would be easier. When I was a winslave, I remember numerous times, where I wanted a simple spreadsheet, just some columns with numbers, etc. And they only option was tabbing over in notepad(preferred) or opening Excel (to be avoided). Sc takes care of that stuff now.
Re:Idiots. Luddites. Same difference. (Score:2)
I absolutely agree that M$ makes it too hard on people. It's unfortunate that many M$-indoctrinites view 'vi', for example, as a complex tool, when its simplicity is a godsend.
I challenge anyone to prove that Visual Studio is truly more productive than sh+vi+make+cc+libs (here's a hint: it isn't). I challenge anyone to prove that Word is more productive than sh+vi+make+LaTeX+ispell (here's a hint: it isn't). And by productive, I mean producing something relatively quickly that, when you are done, is of such quality you would bet your reputation on it.
M$ has introduced so much complexity into our computing lives that I don't know whether I can trust anything produced by Word or Visual Studio enough that I would bet my reputation on it. That uncertainty is simply disturbing.
Re:Snob alert! (Score:2)
I don't call people stupid for their taste in operating systems. I've used almost all of them (I like quite a few of them), and there is only one I despise. Movies, the same. Religion... well, they're kinda dumb, but if its not scientology or the Jim Jones cult, I generally leave them alone. I'm not fat, I don't smell, and my wife appreciates the fact that I'm dateless. I'm tolerant of many things. Stupidity isn't one of them.
And if you didn't notice, I did not blame it all on the user. Who really could use M$ products? Hell, I'd want a paper and pencil too, if it were the only other choice.
But read the article, man. My god, the little snippet about the waitress in a diner (I think in comparison to air traffic controllers). That it's a non-serious example is all the better... technology can do a hell of alot better than that broken pencil she's always losing, or the notepad she writes on it with. The obvious improvement, would be a PDA with 802.11, and a mini-menu that she just has to use the stylus to punch in, rather than scribble in some illegible shorthand.
Think about it, before you attack me. How many 50 cent pads does she go through in a year? Enough to pay for the PDA? No? How about, that she still only has to enter it once, and yet they can have accurate inventory, or more accurate records? THat little diner may not know what it served on Sept 6th, 1983, but by god, every day forth, for the next 20 years, it could. Maybe they'll be able to predict all sorts of things, allowing them to only buy just enough stock, or know when to schedule vacations. All sorts of things that you can't know until you do it.
And then there is the enviromental angle. Do you think they recycle the used notes? Or do they get buried in a landfill? How many people do we employ in paper factories, that could be doing other more important things?
And then we have this schmuck, getting published, claiming paper has some magical property, that makes it perfect for human beings. I want to strangle him. If we arrange our papers so that it has some cool effect, then BY GOD WE CAN WRITE CODE THAT DOES THAT TOO. Companies that think they can buy off the shelf software, that's the problem. Hire some college weenies, and make it their job, to actually interact with the people that will be using the software. Sit them at a desk right next to them. Dock their salaries, every time they write code that isn't what people want or need. But me, I don't want to waste a large fraction of our economic output, producing a tool that is no longer necessary, and ruining the planet in the process.
Re:Snob alert! (Score:3, Interesting)
Now the truly modern approach would be a wall of ready entrees behind glass doors, where you insert coinage (or perhaps an electronic coinage) and retrieve your entree. Like a cafeteria, only better... less waiter-like intermediaries!
Or instead of a wall of compartments, the food can be on a conveyor belt -- popular in Sushi restaurants, no?
Of course, the more primitive Country Buffet has some powerful ideas as well -- self-service feeding! Sure, our grocer used to pick out our food for us too, and someone used to pump our gas, and someone still fetches our food... so inefficient.
A more exotic system might use a push-button, juke-box style menu at each table, and the entree is delivered via vacuum ducts beneath the floor! Or maybe we can pack the whole entree in a single pill! Reconstituted it would be just as good as the original, but in its original form provide an easy-to-pack dinner or lunch. More federal research dollars for this long-overdue idea, please!
Or wouldn't it be great to go to a restaurant where you picked your recipe and it was delivered in pretty little glass bowls all pre-measured and you cooked it yourself and the bowls were whisked away, just like on TV! Even better would be if, after placing the meal in the oven you could immediately remove it from another oven, using time-warping technology that apparently is prevalent in television studios across the world. I can be my own Julia Childs!
Retro schmetro... ambience is for luddites. This is the kind of innovation I want to invest in!
Why I Like Paper (Score:5, Insightful)
+ It doesn't crash
+ It rarely loses data
+ 100% availability with proper care
+ Annotations are simple
+ Easy to take with you
+ Content doesn't change
+ Extremely quick access and intuitive interface
+ High resolution/easy on the eyes
Things I don't enjoy about paper:
+ Indexing/searching is tedious
+ Backups can be difficult
Right now, the list of pros/cons favors paper for me. PDAs are starting to reduce some of the cons (i.e. easy to take with you) but still suffer from most of the rest. About the only time a paper document becomes "unavailable" is when it gets lost. Can the same be said for your PC or PDA?
The crisp black-on-white is easy to read. Some LCD panels have text that is pretty easy to read at low resolutions (i.e. 1024x768 at around 100 pixels per inch) but can't touch the level of detail of even a cheap laser printed page of 300 dots (pixels) per inch. Professional typesetting often gets up to 2400 dots per inch. Not even close. This often doesn't matter for text, but what about that detailed network diagram that gets turned to mud at 100dpi. (Don't even get me started on people who use lossy compression on such images...)
Annotations are a given with paper-- just grab a pen and go to town. In the digital world, each and every software package needs to explicitly support annotations in order for this required ability to be present. So far as I know, no major PDF viewer allows one to take notes on it, so off to the printer it goes! (I realize that some PDF authoring software allows this kind of thing. The ones I have seen were masterpieces of overengineering and were correspondingly priced. What's wrong with a basic "notes in the margin" feature included at no cost?)
Until the massive inconveniences of using digital media are resolved, paper will continue to play a dominant role in exchanging and storing information.
Re: Why I Like Paper (Score:2)
> Annotations are a given with paper-- just grab a pen and go to town. In the digital world, each and every software package needs to explicitly support annotations in order for this required ability to be present. So far as I know, no major PDF viewer allows one to take notes on it, so off to the printer it goes!
You know, I was thinking about this very thing Monday evening, after downloading a 200-page document and trying to balance the need of marking it up vs the need of saving 100 sheets of paper.
We of the OS community who disapprove of MS Word as the near-universal medium of exchange should come up with our own document format, and show that the OS community is genuinely innovative by addressing issues such as this. It should be straightforward to represent documents as a "fixed" base document plus a "malleable" user-markup overlay. It would really be nice to be able to download some daunting documentation and mark it up with underlines, highlighting, margin notes, "yellow stickie" bookmarks, and the like, and have a reader app that let you do the markups as you go, but to always maintain the distinction between the original and the markups.
Look at what MS did right... (Score:2)
If you're going to attempt this, let me give you a piece of advice: Don't let what MS did wrong be your guide. Look at what they did right.
In a reply to Black Parrot's post, somebody started immediately with "don't support plugins so there'll be no bloat...". I appreciate the idea, but that's not the right way to start a new file format. What you need to do is make a list of what MS is doing right with the
The reason the
Once you have those features in place and you know how it should look, only then do you start looking at some of the lessons that MS has learned. Here's an interesting question: why is it bloated? What is MS doing? Are they encrypting it? Are they adding a bunch of bits to it that might be activated later? Did they write a function called 'BloatFile($Filename)'?
I think the main reason that Linux isn't gaining much ground as a desktop OS is because people are actively trying to fix problems that they think plague MS os's, but they're not looking at what MS did right! They quickly dismiss the idea that MS created software that people want and just assume that they make crap and stupid people buy it. Well, if you want to make Linux a better Operating System, then look at what MS did right. For example, out of the box, any Windows OS has TONS of drivers going back many years. Nearly all MS written apps have the same or nearly the same interface. Installation is a breeze. (Not having to create a swap partition is nice.) Doing something like 'change the color depth of my monitor' is as simple as clicking your mouse 3 or 4 times. If they'd develop Linux to be more like Windows in this respect, they'd get a lot farther in the desktop market than trying to fix only the flaws they percieve.
Re:Why I Like Paper (Score:5, Insightful)
Things I enjoy about paper:
+ It doesn't crash
It does burn. Easily.
+ It rarely loses data
Except when it gets lost itself.
+ 100% availability with proper care
Proper care?
+ Annotations are simple
But frequently illegible.
+ Easy to take with you
But not in large quantities.
+ Content doesn't change
What about those annotations?
+ Extremely quick access
If you're in the same room with it.
and intuitive interface
except in matters of layout and typography.
+ High resolution/easy on the eyes
Unless you're looking at a 10th generation photocopy.
People are so used to putting up with the weaknesses of paper documents that they think they're strengths.
Re:Why I Like Paper (Score:2)
I tend to doubt this will ever happen. Those who provide software for money seem to be hell bent on splitting markets wherever possible to gain a financial edge. Companies like this tend to succeed and earn markets because of the rich ability of software to earn money without "doing anything useful".
Funny thing is, I totally disagree with your reasoning on paper vs digital content. I used to take a lot of notes on post it's and whatever I could find. Then I had to go back and find some of what I'd been working on 3 months later. Ever since, I've been trying to keep as much of my notes in text files as possible, keeping them in an organized directory structure with other things related to them. I still use a binder for notes(one 120 pager per month or so), but I find it becoming more and more a "scratch" area, and less anything I'd want to worry about permanently.
Currently the worst thing about my text notes is that when my manager prints them out, he tends to get screwed up newlines because windows notepad sucks so bad. Course, he can't read my chicken scratch either.
Re:Why I Like Paper (Score:2)
Neither method is as easy as "cp bigdoc.pdf /mnt/floppy".
The reason I like printed matterial (Score:4, Insightful)
2) I scribble over it and keep these notes for later reference.
and most importantly,
3) I can take it with me to the loo where I can read it at leisure.
Re:The reason I like printed matterial (Score:2)
e-book
> 2) I scribble over it and keep these notes for later
> reference.
good e-book (with pen and touch sensitive screen).
> 3) I can take it with me to the loo where I can rea
e-book
Re:The reason I like printed matterial (Score:2)
I actually do all those things with my PDA, and for me it's especially good for things like quick notes because they come out legible [mutters about written languages optimized for the right-handed], and I dont lose them.
Re:The reason I like printed matterial (Score:2)
The underlying falacy... (Score:3, Insightful)
This underlying falacy was coined (by whom - that would be interesting to research..) by two different sorts of people trying to do two very different things:
1) one was a cost-analysis expert trying to rationalize an expensive investment in hardware and software
and..
2) at the other end of the spectrum, a polyanna futurist concocting a forecast of the brave new world we would soon be joining.
The biggest problem -- and here I'd probably blame the popular media -- is that our culture bought into the idea and it became it's own self-replicating meme.
The big problem is that the fundamental idea is a bunch of cr*p.
At some point, I'm very, very sorry, but at some point we need hard copy.
This will be true for some time, I would think, if not indefinitely...
t_t_b
Sounds like something else (Score:2)
The 'freedom' of self-written hacks, anywhere on the machine/OS, as compared to the restricted rigidity of a system...
I know that I use paper for tons of things, and would much rather type for tons of others. OSS and 'boxed' apps have their places...
Collaborate? Use a Whiteboard... (Score:2)
Where I work, in particular, we need a couple more ingredients in order to become close to paperless: Tablet PC's and roaming wireless capability. Tablet PC's are obvious, the stylus interface would lend itself much better than dragging a laptop to the meeting. Wireless roaming is a little harder to define, though. 802.11 will definitely do the job, but the biggest paper offenders also travel alot. If the tablet could wirelessly get on the internet from wherever the destination is, then I think I could convince some of the people here to adopt it instead of paper.
I'm starting to see wider use of PDA's (mostly Palm Pilots) being used for keeping contact info, but I'm not seeing a whole lot of note taking on them. A couple of us around here drag our laptop to meetings to take notes. This is why I think the tablet idea might work. Despite the simplicity of a laptop, undocking it and setting it up at the meeting seems like such a hassle compared to bringing a notepad.
How about the paperless home? (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate paper enough that I am almost done scanning years worth of pay stubs, credit card statements, statements, time sheets, repairs, orders, taxes,
Had this posed to me in a job interview.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides everything you need to know or do is on a post-it anyway. You just can't find where you stuck it.
The biggest problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention that everyone is always more trusting of paper copies. It is usually very easy to discover if a paper copy has been altered.
When you are able to talk to your computer in plain language, ie "Bring up the invoice from last month" you might be able to begin to eliminate paper. Don't get me wrong, computers are great for indexing and retreiving data. Getting the data into the computer is the hard part.
Welcome to the Paperless Office (Score:3, Funny)
Apple Computer, "Piles", and Unix inflexibility... (Score:3, Informative)
If I recall, one of the various user interface paradigms Apple was working on in the 80's-90's (circa Taligent and Pink) was an interface specifically called "Piles" based on some of this research.
While that never saw the light of day, the lessons learned from that research made their way into the Standard Macintosh bibles of user interface design. To wit:
This is, IMHO, one reason why the classic Mac OS interface was so amazing. You (the user) had complete freedom in organizing the documents on your computer however you wished. Spacially, color-based, or sorted. You could store your documents in whatever made sense to you, without the operating system declaring the Right Place for documents (ie, home directory, etc.. a la Windows and Unix).
Some people's Macs made sense only to their user, which is just how it should be - considering that it's a PC
Now with Apple moving to unix underpinnings which, thanks to the rigidness and inflexibility built into unix, don't allow for this type of "personal organization", it's difficult to find a system design that understands this.
This is the NUMBER ONE problem "old-school" Mac OS users have with Mac OS X - being told that they have to organize things in a certain way (ie, "in your home directory") and the thing that people coming to Mac OS X from a standard unix background don't (can't) understand.
Re:Apple Computer, "Piles", and Unix inflexibility (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Apple Computer, "Piles", and Unix inflexibility (Score:2)
I agree with this.
In UNIX there is a clear difference between applications and documents and this is a good thing. The user gets full control of where they put documents but the internal workings of where the applications are is hidden.
Installing software is much easier because you don't have to worry about where to install things; you just click the packages you want and they are installed automatically.
On the other hand, documents should be left entirely up to the user. I personally do not use the Evolution mail client because it messes up my
On a macintosh, I have a harder time because I need to know where files are stored on the harddrive to start them. I also get confused because there are many files that I don't know what they are or do.
When my company... (Score:3, Interesting)
As long as there is Word (Score:3, Insightful)
"Can I print it out?" is the most oft-heard phrase in IT. Satellite images of the Pacific Northwest slowly fade from green to brown as the laser and inkjets churn out page after page after page of documents that nobody reads.
The quote is and remains, "if it can't be described on a single 8.5x11 sheet of paper, it cannot be understood." I have an additional quote. "The only person who reads every page of a 50-page work of non-fiction is the person who wrote it."
But the more fundamental problem is this: the current group of GUIs for computers are terribly inefficient when trying to keep up with a time-limited multiple-task environment like air traffic control. Note that ATC displays are monochrome text and dots, not 50 fps, 3D-enhanced, voxel-textured, next-generation, quad-GPU multimedia extravaganzas.
Trying to get a lot of small items of information into multiple places with the current "desktop computers" is a task apparently best suited to an xterm. No mouse required, no navigating a little pointer all over the place, no looking for things, no browsing. Also, the GUI on Windows is a royal pain to use when trying to read from one application and type in another. Bah.
Just some rambling thoughts.
Paper User Interface (Score:3, Informative)
Paper User Interfaces for Paper Documents
I've been working on a product for a few years that uses paper as a user interface [google.com] , kind of a follow-on to the graphical user interface. I used to joke with friends that I was working on an 8.5x11 inch 400 dpi gray-scale display that costs 2.5 cents.
Document Tokens -- making paper a first class citizen on the network
You scan your documents, and they get stored in a document repository on the network (using WebDAV over HTTP or some other protocol), and it prints out a piece of paper that refers to the electronic document on the network, kind of a like a paper document or a paper URL. I named it a "Document Token". You drop it in your copier, for example, press the big green button, and it automatically recognizes it, retrieves the original, and prints it back. Or if you asked it to e-mail the scanned document instead, it will e-mail the document as an attachment or just a hyperlink.
Cover Sheets as Forms
Another thing you can do is print out a cover sheet with checkboxes on it and some document meta-data built in, so you can drop the cover sheet for your "Legal Contracts" on top of the latest contract you got, check the box for the account you're dealing with, and press the start button. It will scan, store based on the directions embedded in the paper, and associate the document meta-data with the paper.
Situated Meta-Data Capture
One of the most expensive things about scanning is associating the meta-data with the document after scanning. When you have the paper in hand, you know what the document is and where it came from. The file folder or desktop location is right there in front of you, and the physical presence of the document triggers certain kinds of memory as well. In ethnographic terms, the document is what Lucy Suchman calls situated [google.com] When you try to add meta-data to a document after scanning, you (or worse, someone hired to look at it for you) is staring at a set of bits on a computer screen, completely divorced from its context, and it's expensive to discover where it came from and what it means. If you can associate this information with the paper document when it's in the paper domain, by marking it down on a paper user interface, then you save lots of time and money.
W3C Standardization
For the web to become a truly ubiquitous computing interface, it must move beyond the desktop. We're working with the W3C [w3c.org] to standardize an XML representation of forms such that the same form purpose can be expressed in different media -- desktop, pda, mobile phone, and even paper. Take a look at the XForms [w3c.org] last-call specification [w3c.org].
Product
The product is called FlowPort [xerox.com]
Electricity and Ergonomics (Score:2)
Reading info off a screen takes lots of electricity, even from a backlit LCD. What are some more efficient display technologies?
Reading info off a screen is uncomfortable. We need electronic user interfaces that are just as comfortable and intuitive as paper. What in development is striving for that goal?
Re:Electricity and Ergonomics (Score:2)
So you are one of those people who go up to a computer monitor and go: "How the fuck do I use this then?"
Paper is no more or less "intuitive" than an electronic screen. Maybe you feel that is is because you physically hold the paper, but all your "intuitive" responses to paper (screwing it up, writing on it, passing it to someone) are all learned.
There will come a time in the not too distant future when the new youth (with giant thumbs) find it harder to deal with a sheet of paper than their email client. (They'll probably tap their finger on the top right of it when they've finished reading it).
graspee
Double standards (Score:2)
One day I asked him, "You have teenage kids, right?" He said yes. I asked him if he tells his kids to clean up their rooms. He said yes. I didn't know what to say after that.
Technology and why desktop GUIs don't go far enuf (Score:2, Insightful)
Now sometimes I do view it on my PC, but it's not convenient--even though I do have two monitors, like the situation with flight controllers, the windows open on the monitors reflect the mental process I'm going through, and are often filled up. What I need is a third monitor for viewing faxes or other letter size documents, ideally a flat screen that I can place on my desk, about 300 DPI would be good, 8 1/2" by 11" viewing space, with a wireless connection to my computer, a battery, and an adapter to get power from the wall.
About the only thing this wouldn't let me do is look at two or more full size pages side by side (although you could reduce the size). Add the ability to store pages/documents, annotate with "digital ink" and you've got a flexible replacement for paper in certain situations.
Now if everyone in the office has one and you bring them into the conference room to do some collaboration you can spread them all out and view multiple pages from the same document. Make them intelligent and self organizing, so if you line them up, the left-most display shows page one, the next one to the right shows page two, etc. That might be cool.
The other big problem I've been thinking about lately is the way operating systems treat and store documents, and this has a lot to do with the file systems and half-baked desktop metaphors that we're stuck with.
It's never been a secret to me that the piles, stacks, and seemingly random placement of documents is critical to the whole work process. The point I've been wondering lately is why do the GUI metaphors stop at documents, folders, and desktops?
Why not have stacks, piles, in boxes, out boxes, multiple desktops, shelfs, binders, filing cabinets, etc. It seems to me that if you can more closely approximate the "real world baggage" that goes along with the work process/thinking process within the computer, you're one step ahead.
You should never have to "save" a document that you create in a word processor (or any other productivity app) for instance. It's automatically saved (each revision too). Maybe an icon gets put on the desktop (where your current work goes anyway). Maybe you decide it's not a document you need to keep so you drag it over to the recycle bin.
(Which by the way, extending the real world metaphor I'm proposing here, gets cleaned out each night by the janitor. All of the documents in the recycle bins go to a dumpster which is picked up each week and taken to a dump. Forget about remembering to empty your recycle bin. If you want to retrieve a document you've deleted in the last week, go virtual dumpster diving. If it's really old, go to the dump, but remember that things decay in the dump, and your document may have rotted away...)
But maybe you just want to put it in a "recent business" pile (in case you need to find it quickly in the next day or two), and decide what to do with it later. Maybe it needs to be filed, so you drag it over to a filing cabinet drawer. Maybe it needs to be filed, but you don't know where, so you drop it on top of the filing cabinet for someone else to file later.
The possibilities are interesting here for extending the office metaphor. For instance, anyone can come into my office (unless I've locked it and they don't have a key) and pick up a book off my bookshelf. Or get a file from my filing cabinet (again, unless I've locked it). Or if I go out and buy a safe, I can put stuff in there they can't get to without the combination. Here's a model for user permissions anyone should be able to grasp. And you give acces, you don't need to worry about someone coming in and modifying a document because it will only create a new revision under their name. Delete access could be denied to all but the creator of a document (and presumably the system admin) OR if someone else "throws away" a document you created, the "janitor" can come to you and say "so and so threw away this document you created, but I saved it for you in case you needed it".
And the "key" you need to get into a locked filing cabinet or the "combination" you need to get documents in a digital safe could be a password or it could be an actual eletronic key (card with mag stripe) or biometric data (fingerprint)--the system shouldn't care...
Maybe I'm going too far with this but I really think the desktop metaphor needs to be extended to mimic the real world in several cases (and perhaps by making computers a little more like the real world, users will find it easier to deal with them).
The real "office" is already paperless - read on (Score:2)
So outside of little reminders, the bulk of business has gone paperless and hence the article is moot.
Re:The real "office" is already paperless - read o (Score:2)
Well, it was four until about a month ago. Direct deposit gets money at 12:01 AM Friday. Paper waits until 4:00 PM Friday.
Why I'll never be paperless... (Score:4, Insightful)
But there's a very good reason I'll never give up paper totally: Comfort.
It's like the person who eats out at gourmet restaurants all the time, but can't resist a grilled cheese sandwich with canned tomato soup. It's comfort food for the mind.
I love the smell of paper, the texture of it, and the way the printed word looks on it. Paper is a very tactile thing. It's there, you feel it. it's a part of your physical world. Words on a view screen will never compete with it, at least not for me.
As an added bonus, I can read a book for 8 hours straight and not want to dig my eyes out with a spoon.
Re:Why I'll never be paperless... (Score:2)
Paperless office isn't about paper (Score:2, Insightful)
A paperless office is a GOOD THING(tm) but more of a good thing isn't necessarily better.
-CZ
Paper is Essential; So are Bytes (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was in college, I finally hit upon the proper way to write a paper. Not the all-too-common stream of consciousness in Word, but the tried and true method. I would first go to the library and use the electronic catalogue to find the general locations of books on my subject (say, 19th century German naval policy). Then I'd go to that section and browse the shelves looking for more books on the subject than my search had turned up. You see, the old and the new methods were complimentary.
I'd fill my briefcase with books, then head out to the local pub and get a table. I'd spread the books in great piles around me, pull out a sheet of paper and write--in longhand--a very general outline of what I wanted. Writing by hand forced me to think harder about what I was doing, as it is slower than typing. I'd then thumb through the books, noting on index cards what items were interesting (so that I could refer to them later). I'd then improve my outline and flesh it out, each time rewriting it longhand--making me familiar with it, revealing where it lacked &c.
Then I'd write the paper, by hand, from the outline. I'd read through it, and make any corrections which revealed themselves. Finally, I'd return to my flat and format the whole thing in LaTeX. This is where footnotes and the like would be inserted, using those notecards I mentioned earlier. I'd print out a draft, read through it once more, then print a final copy for my professor.
This manual process enabled me to consider the thrust and flow of my papers, of the arguments therein. It enabled me to do far better research than students who relied solely on the electronic index of books. It enabled the best grades of my college career. It also enabled me to enjoy many fine beers at the local pub, which was just fine by me:-)
The computer was no less essential. A paper formatted in LaTeX is a thing of beauty--and this cannot be over-emphasised when discussing the resulting grades. A paper written longhand is unatttractive.
The technologies are not mutually exclusive, but rather complimentary.
Re:Why Paper Rules (Score:4, Funny)
"Yep: 1440 dpi"
Re:Why Paper Rules (Score:4, Funny)
Three more words (Score:3, Insightful)
Glare: monitor glare makes things hard to see
Portability: until you have a 2-ounce monitor that you can hold in your hand while reclining in your chair, paper's got you beat.
I'm sure there's more. Personally, even beeing the computer-geek that I am, I MUST do the final editing of any document I produce with a paper printout. I don't know why, but it's just SO much easier.
MadCow.
Re:Three more words (Score:2)
MadCow.
Resolution is not that big of deal (Score:2)
Pictures taken at 640 by 480 look just fine. Sure, they could withstand getting closer to them at higher DPI, but it suffices just fine. The point I'm making is that DPI has little to nothign to do with why people still use paper. The main reason it's still used in the office environment is that there isn't a technological alternative that has all the same requirements. Laptops are harder to set up than taking a notepad into a meeting, and PocketPC's are too small.
I think Microsoft is doing the right thing by pursuing the Tablet PC market the way they are. They're trying to make the Tablet PC as good as paper. If you ever catch their marketing video on it, it portrays people drawing on their tablet with the stylus, highlighting/copying/pasting, etc. I think this is the first step. The second step would be to make it really light and connect wirelessly. The 3rd would be to make it dirt cheap. Get a few of these floating around your office and you'll see a dramatic reduction in paper usage.
Re:Resolution is not that big of deal (Score:2)
Of course, in the early days of PCs a lot of companies put eager young engineer on hardware selection projects, where they chose 14" monitors as standards. Works real well if you are 50 y.o. ...
sPh
Re:Why Paper Rules (Score:2, Interesting)
And they must be run by separate PC(s) so you can reboot, BSOD , whatever without losing the ability to use the information.
Re:Why Paper Rules (Score:2, Funny)
Re:wrong (Score:3, Funny)
Darn... I was just starting to feel really productive
Re:wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
A messy desk can be an indicator of productivity if there is a statistical correlation between the two. It is not an assurance of productivity and therefore cannot be used as a measure of productivity.
For example, an "Insightful" comment is a sign of a post with some insight into some subject or other. However, as we have just seen, it is not an assurance of such insight.
...I'm not usually this bitter...
Re:wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
When I casuall remark about this I always get the "a messy desk is a sign of productivity" crap.
So to those people, my post could have been insight full. Although Informative, or +1 slobs please read may have been better
truth be told I consider my post a 2, but hey they won't even let me moderate for some reason.
Re:wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
I am one of those who have a "messy" desk. But it is only messy to the untrained eye. I *know* where things are. Some neurologists have theorized that those who have a "messy" bedroom or desk, but can remember pretty much where everything is, can do so because the "mess" is something we created.
In any case, people such as myself, tend to be non-lateral thinkers. It took years to convince my mother that my room wasn't messy. What finally worked was that she said something to the effect of "you can't find anything in there". I replied with "No, mom, YOU can't. I can find anything."
After twenty minutes of her asking for something and me demonstrating I knew exactly where it was, she finally gave in.
Still, a messy desk *is* a "sign" of productivity, but it is not a positive proof of it. After all, there have been "signs" of bigfoot and aliens, but you still have to look at other factors. Those people you run in to confuse "sign of" with "cause of". While we're being pedantic, productivity can not be a sign of productivity.
Re:wrong (Score:4, Funny)
Now if only I could convince my girlfriend of the virtues of me having a messy house....
Don't get me started...Oop, too late! (Score:3, Interesting)
On paperless offices, well, heck I was just discussing how well a client would work to view action forms by the helpdesk when another super said, they prefer them on paper. So be it. Paper it is.
Several years ago I was up to my eyeballs in a project of charting trends every which way to Sunday, 800 different charts and 12 copies of each. Gad. I worked with a buddy and we modified the in-house terminal program to show graphs. It blew them away. No more mountains of paper, right? Well, the first question they had was, "how can we print this?" It still reduced paper, but the irony was
in the limit, you will be sad. (Score:2)
The limit of girlfriend as age goes to thirty is wife or zero.
When her belly swells, some things get pushed to the side and never come back. No, not those things! I mean dishes, laundry, what not. When it happens you will understand Elvis and "Shake rattle and roll." "Get in the kitchen and make some noise with your pots and pans!" he says. Good luck.
Oh, on topic, people who don't have virtual screens and desktops on operating systems that don't crash and that can serve files with proper permisions, will never believe that an office can work without paper. So sad, too bad, what can you expect from the tiny mummies at the New Yorker? Is your first name Buster?
Re:wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
The productivity itself is what is signified.
Together, they make a sign.
Stupid Stupid Article and Here Is Why: (Score:2, Interesting)
Paper documents have no automated way to enforce document retention standards (just ask Enron and Arthur Anderson)
Paper documents have no way to search the documents to enter the data in the "corporate memory". Infinitely valuable information is never cataloged and reviewed
The reason organizations don't manage this better is most document management syetems are very difficult and expensive to own.
This article takes a reactionary stance to try to promote (another useless) management philosphy and sell a book.
I want to write a book entitled "The Myth of the Management Book That's Not Full Of Crap".
But no one would read it.
Re:Whoever wrote this... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Whoever wrote this... (Score:2)
(snicker)
For one of my clients, I made a bogus TPS report and left it for them to discover. I've been told that when one of the middle-managment types found it, he 'bout pissed his pants with glee.
Re:paper office? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where have you heard that rainforests are cleared for paper production? Paper is usually made from pulp harvested from tree farms, which IIRC use Southern Pine and other dime-a-dozen species. Rainforests are usually cleared for cattle ranching, construction, and exotic hardwoods.
I've already seen several posters who rate electronic documents over paper documents because of the tree-saving factor; have they all forgotten that the pc uses electricity, which consumes all sorts of natural resources? I'm as much for saving the environment as the next guy is. Let's start by being factual: does anybody have a reliable comparison of Total Energy Cost of paper & electronic documents?
Re:paper office? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:paper office? (Score:2)
half right today is all wrong tomorow. (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue of power consumption is silly. People are never going to stop using PCs regardless of how much paper they waste. The PC will sit on their desk burning up electricity even if it's only used to print duplicates of email and view porn. PCs will consume less energy in the future and reprocessed nuclear fuel is a renuable resource much like southern pine.
Finally, rain forests are not being cut for cattle farming and exotic hard wood. Most trees in Brazil are felled for slash and burn agriculture by "settelers", refugees from urban slums. The exotic hardwood is burnt with the rest because few countries will buy it. Cattle farming may move in after the land is exhausted (one year or so for the soil to errode to unusable clay.) but it's not a pimary cause.
The world is what you make it. We can use our resources wisely and make more for each other, of we can let vendors of shoddy wares waste our resources and efforts. Surely, M$ is the primary reason people print all of their junk at work, and the paperless office uses more paper than ever before.
Re:egocentric attitude (Score:2)