Paper Power : So Low-Tech -- and So Entrenched
by Jim Carroll

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In 1900, at the dawn of the new millennium, a tiny but important invention was registered at the U.S. Patent Office - the paper clip. If you think about it, this little device is intimately related to what is probably the predominant information technology of the 20th century.

Paper.

How can it be, with all the trillions of dollars spent on silicon-based brains and other technologies, that so much of the world`s information remains bound to sheets of bleached, dried wood-pulp, held together by tiny bits of wire?

The Past

When computers first entered the world of business, pundits and futurists immediately proclaimed that the end of paper was near. 

Organizations would soon be able to implement, it was said, sophisticated computer systems that would make paper go away. Noted Forbes in 1967, in an article predicting the demise of paper-based bills: "Gone forever will be the boring task of writing and mailing checks to pay monthly bills" 

The most eager predictions involved the typical 8 ½" x 11" sheet of paper. It was destined for the dustbin of history, noted Business Week in an article in 1975 examining "the office of the future." They promised that forthcoming word processing equipment was "the start of the paperless office."

The concept of the "paperless society" was born, and we eagerly awaited a resolution to the flood of paper which seemed to be enveloping us.

Today

We`re still waiting, and if we look around, we realize that we are drowning in paper.

Since 1982, production of office paper has grown by 60%. North American businesses generate some 1 trillion new pieces of paper every year. It is difficult to put such numbers into perspective, other than to say that you could build a wall 12 feet high stretching from New York City to Los Angeles with the paper that we throw out every year. We use about 2 new pounds of paper per person per day, if you factor in not just office paper, but newsprint, paper packaging and other forms of paper. Paper cheques would soon disappear? Americans wrote some 64 billion of them, triple the amount some thirty years before.

The cost to deal with all of this paper is simply astronomical, with studies indicating that filling a four-drawer filing cabinet costs about $25,000, when you include the cost of our time in generating, processing and dealing with the stuff. The cost doesn`t disappear once you file it away - it`s another $2,100 per year to maintain it, given that it takes some ten minutes to retrieve and re-file each piece of paper when needed. Not to mention the additional costs related to the 3% of documents which are misfiled, and which can only be retrieved at a further cost of about $120 per document! 

We can hold technology such as photocopiers, laser printers, fax machines, computers and other devices to be directly responsible. One consulting firm reported in yet another study that the typical office worker visits a fax machine, printer or copier some 61 times a week. According to Hewlett Packard, the introduction of e-mail, which was supposed to reduce the exchange of paper-based inter-office memos, resulted in a 40% increase in printing volumes! 

The vast sums of money invested in office technology have done little to stem the tide, and in fact, have simply become better at churning out more paper. Photocopiers? Leading edge models today can churn out more than 100 copies a minute, compared to 7.5 pages for the first model in 1959. Fax machines? Conceptually, a photocopier plugged into a telephone that we adopted it with a vengeance, with North Americans sending some 65 billion faxes in North American in 1997 alone. 

There are those who gallantly fight the battle. Owens Corning opened an office in 1997 in Toledo, Ohio, purposefully omitting space for filing cabinets as part of an effort to become a "paperless office." Yet the company soon found that it continued to purchase those pink "While You Were Out" phone message pads, which demonstrates that no matter how hard an organization might struggle to eliminate it, paper always manages to fight back.

Tomorrow

Is the concept of the paperless office but a pipe dream?

It is instructive to learn that on the World Wide Web, you can purchase a study that examines this question. Available from CAP Ventures, it indicates that paper consumption in the U.S. will grow from 43.7 to 65.6 million tons between 1995 and 2015. Ironically, you can buy the report online for $9,495US. The company promises to ship the 350-page document to you as quickly as they can. 
Is there something instructive here in the fact that a report called "The Future Of Paper" is available only on paper?

Wernher von Braun once commented that "we can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming." No doubt that is true; we can`t make this stuff go away as hard as we might try. Noted one fellow who works for a company in the paper industry: "People are in love with paper. They want to feel it in their hands." 

It`s the ultimate information relationship, most likely because it remains the most simple technology in our daily lives. As one wag put it, "you don`t have to turn paper on and wait for it to boot." Paper doesn`t crash, you don`t have to worry that you`ll get a nasty error message when you try to use it, or worry that it will suffer from compatibility problems.

There are, of course, brave souls who continue to attempt to rid the world of paper in the workplace, their efforts aided by studies which show significant cost savings from the exchange of "electronic documents." As a result, it should come as no surprise that the electronic document industry will grow to $152.3 billion annually from today`s $97.5 billion. But listen carefully, and you won`t hear too many within this industry talk of the "paperless office," since even they know that the total elimination of paper remains but a pipe dream.

There is no doubt that as our electronic world continues to unfold that the world of business will find ways to eliminate more and more paper. Yet will it ever truly disappear? Likely not -- the real question is, can we actually change habits and relationship that have accumulated over the centuries? 

The answer is no. Indeed, we will come to find that paper and electronic information will come to co-exist in an uneasy yet stable truce, both of them competing for our attention and time.

This article is Copyright © 1999 Jim Carroll. All rights reserved. Jim Carroll is the Ontario based author of over 25 books related to the Internet and e-commerce. For more information on Jim Carroll`s expertise and availability contact Speakers Platform: Speakers@speaking.com or (805) 892-2386.