In 1999 the university decreed that the school would be completely paperless by 2001. In 2008 we are using more paper than ever even with fast scanning technologies. The legal department requires that we have paper copies on hand for most details. This is a constant problem in technology. The law is constantly behind in understanding what is happening in technology updates. Data storage is becoming more secure, but it needs find a place in the legal realm.
I think part of this wish for remaining in the paper realm is two fold: you can hold paper (tactile benefits) and you may lose it on your desk, but you know it didn’t vanish into the electronic ethos. How many times has a paper disappeared due to not saving it before the lights went out? If your write on a piece of paper, unless your pen explodes, you are pretty sure that writing is still there.
I have noticed a common trend in email signatures these days that I like: “please think if you really need to print this out – save a tree”. I hope that this will join in with the many greening ideas that this country needs to have a paradigm shift into conservation living and not living to excess.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
![Printer issues](<a href="http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/08/15/funny-pictures-nd-press-reset/"><img class="mine_1631330" src="http://icanhascheezburger.wordpress.com/files/2008/08/funny-pictures-your-printer-has-a-kitten-in-it.jpg" alt="cat" /></a><br />more <a href="http://icanhascheezburger.com">animals</a>)
2 comments:
Missyd, I remember when there were predictions (even on Oprah, I believe--yikes!) that everything would soon be going paperless. It too was around the year 1999. New books would be created largely in electronic format because nearly everyone would be "wired," and it would be cost-effective to produce only the electronic version. That is yet to happen because everyone seems so comfortable with the paper, flip-page format. There is the new Amazon Kindle, which supports paperless books and newspapers, and it is supposedly on backorder (or was recently). Maybe the paperless shift will still happen, just more slowly than expected.
Part of what ruined the mass transformation from paper to paperless is that fact that probably everyone who has ever written a paper for school has found it to either mysteriously disappear or become “file corrupt” and not accessible. This lies in the memories of everyone that wants to keep media material and especially for those that depend on this material for their livelihood. It really is ridiculous at the amount of paper that is used by our society. My mailbox is full of fliers, sales coupons, and unsolicited advertisements every day. One thing that we can do is develop safeguards on computers that will save everything entered in a location that can always be accessed unless it is manually deleted. This will snuff out the ill feeling everyone has about saving data rather than printing it out.
Post a Comment