I could care less about the environmental impact of printing emails on paper. Using up one of our renewable resources? Go for it. What bothers me is the sheer inefficiency of a paper-based office. Why in the world do we need to print out emails, websites, or other bits of information to act on it? For archival or reference? And emergency backup? It certainly doesn't make information workflow any easier. In fact, it's a wasteful duplication of effort. Does anyone have any good modern reasons for why paper is necessary in today's office? Assume that the employees are information workers who know how to effectively use computers.
P.S. I understand the creative appeal of pen(cil) and paper. I It's great for brainstorming, rough-drafting, and early prototyping. Beyond that, I can't imagine a good reason for it.
Here, paper is still used en-masse to print documents for review meetings.
I agree that is pretty wasteful, especially if you have a lot of revisions of a large document, and many people are present. You print something to throw it away an hour later.
I wouldn't know the cost/benefit analysis though, it might be that the paper-based solution is simply cheaper than giving everyone a laptop. And many people prefer to read on paper (though e-paper would solve this, but that'd be even more expensive).
The mindset needs to change. The thought process should not be "let's replace paper with laptops or e-readers or iPads so workers can use e-paper". Paper as a concept needs to die. Not replaced with technology, but literally made extinct.
Paper is just a medium for information to exist. The medium doesn't need to be replaced. It should be bypassed. I think it's a habitual crutch workers have, to print information out, for it to be tangible.
I agree that although horribly inefficient, paper is cheap (even with printing expenses), and thus attractive compared to buying everyone an iPad. That's unfortunate because I believe it handicaps workers by acting as an unnecessary bottleneck when it should be completely removed from the information workflow wherever possible.
As the founder and CEO of http://73primenumbers.com I couldn't disagree more. Here are some advantages of our time-tested Paper and Pencil application suite:
Yes it's cheap, even with printing expenses. But what if you factor in employee time over all employees?
- walking to the printer, then waiting (sometimes in line) for the document to be printed
- discovering that the document did not print and mysteriously disappeared in the print queue, walking back to seat, and send new print request, then go back to printer
- walking to a different floor when the printer is broken or stuck (happens quite a lot with busyly-used printers)
- if you find that something is wrong with the document, you can start the process over again
OK, most of these are merely annoyances that don't cost a lot of time. But you wouldn't hear me complain if all paper and printers were forbidden and removed :)
That's not how they got rid of telegraphs.
Something(s) tangibly better came along and telegraphs faded away.
Paper will die when people stop using it not when someone tells them to.
P.S. I understand the creative appeal of pen(cil) and paper. I It's great for brainstorming, rough-drafting, and early prototyping. Beyond that, I can't imagine a good reason for it.