

Fuck Paper - mcscom
http://thoughtinfection.com/2013/03/23/fuck-paperwork-part-1-fuck-paper/

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claudius
While the article points out many uses of paper that are indeed rather
questionable, there at the moment appear to be no viable alternatives:

\- I would rather get a bill on paper than an email saying that I can download
said bill somewhere after logging in, re-entering my passwords and sometimes
entering another PIN (German o2). Of course there are also companies capable
of attaching a PDF file to an email, but these appear to be the exception
rather than the rule.

\- Tracking expenses by means of little strips of paper could be improved by
putting little QR codes on said little strips of paper. You could scan the
code, track the expense, drop the paper. But this would require a standard of
sorts, and I doubt that it would be easy to implement in the fifty bazillion
legacy checkout systems.

\- Scientific work (read: calculations) either require paper or blackboards,
the former being easier to handle if there are many calculations, the latter
better if there are fewer calculations and more thinking. But then you also
want to be able to see at least three different pages with four different
formulae at the same time. Given that carrying around three iPads is rather
unhandy, you’ll either need a book (or two or three) or print out those damn
lecture notes.

And if you just printed 150 pages for some calculations, you can hardly
complain if you get a few bills each month…

~~~
mcscom
> logging in, re-entering my passwords and sometimes entering another PIN

Agreed this is really annoying. It should be just a PDF for sure

>Scientific work

I feel a white board (or even better a smart board) works for most purposes.
Paper gets lost too easily. Although the ubiquitous lab book is going to be
hard to kill off entirely

~~~
claudius
> I feel a white board (or even better a smart board) works for most purposes.
> Paper gets lost too easily. Although the ubiquitous lab book is going to be
> hard to kill off entirely

I get tired after writing on a whiteboard for half an hour or so. If it’s not
a smart board, you will have to erase parts eventually – and even though
boards are larger than A4, they’re not infinite (and markers make you writer
larger than HB pencils).

The lab book is probably not only more convenient/flexible but also slightly
harder to fake than an Origin table or some such thing.

