Paperless Society
March 17th 2007 07:26
Back in the 80s, I suppose it was, there was a great deal of talk about the Paperless Society. The increased use of computers in offices was supposed to rid us of paper.
Perhaps it was the discovery that yesterday's technology often became inaccessible today that caused office workers to be more cautious of computers in terms of storage, but whatever the reason, the paperless society has never managed to make it. In fact we use paper with more abandon than ever.
I cringe every time I see people at work using the photo copier. It's a marvellous machine that can multi-task with ease, and it can often be
sending a fax, scanning, copying and printing out all at the same time. But the people who use it are the mystery.
Something doesn't quite print out correctly: bam! into the bin go dozens of sheets of paper.
Something is printed on the wrong quality paper: bam! into the bin goes the wrongly printed paper.
Something doesn't send from the person's own computer quite as expected: bam! into the bin goes more paper.
The copier prints out a transmission report with each fax sent. Into the bin goes the transmission report.
And then there are the timesheets. Hundreds of peices of paper are used each week. Often only a few parts of the paper will be written on, a few boxes filled in. The office staff copy the information into a program that calculates all the wages. The timesheets are held for a week or so, scanned and then bam! they're biffed.
Yesterday, I had to open the large bin that holds all the paper that's due to be 'Document Destructed' - we'd managed to miss scanning something, it appeared, and had to find it before it was shredded.
The bin held some several thousand sheets of paper. All going to be turned into shreds. Perhaps they'll have a brief further life as packaging, but then they'll be biffed again, into landfill.
In the last place I worked at, we were very conscious of recycling, because we had very little money to come and go on. Everything piece of packaging that came into the shop would be sent back out again round another parcel. Only paper that wasn't reusable in any form was put into the recycling bags. All cardboard (that is, all cardboard that didn't get used as packaging) was sent to the recyclers. The hosts of catalogues that came into the shop were used as packaging, as were the polystyrene balls and the plastic wrapping. In fact, in the entire seventeen years I was there, we never brought any actual packaging, apart from courier packs.
Perhaps it was the discovery that yesterday's technology often became inaccessible today that caused office workers to be more cautious of computers in terms of storage, but whatever the reason, the paperless society has never managed to make it. In fact we use paper with more abandon than ever.
I cringe every time I see people at work using the photo copier. It's a marvellous machine that can multi-task with ease, and it can often be
Something doesn't quite print out correctly: bam! into the bin go dozens of sheets of paper.
Something is printed on the wrong quality paper: bam! into the bin goes the wrongly printed paper.
Something doesn't send from the person's own computer quite as expected: bam! into the bin goes more paper.
The copier prints out a transmission report with each fax sent. Into the bin goes the transmission report.
And then there are the timesheets. Hundreds of peices of paper are used each week. Often only a few parts of the paper will be written on, a few boxes filled in. The office staff copy the information into a program that calculates all the wages. The timesheets are held for a week or so, scanned and then bam! they're biffed.
Yesterday, I had to open the large bin that holds all the paper that's due to be 'Document Destructed' - we'd managed to miss scanning something, it appeared, and had to find it before it was shredded.
The bin held some several thousand sheets of paper. All going to be turned into shreds. Perhaps they'll have a brief further life as packaging, but then they'll be biffed again, into landfill.
In the last place I worked at, we were very conscious of recycling, because we had very little money to come and go on. Everything piece of packaging that came into the shop would be sent back out again round another parcel. Only paper that wasn't reusable in any form was put into the recycling bags. All cardboard (that is, all cardboard that didn't get used as packaging) was sent to the recyclers. The hosts of catalogues that came into the shop were used as packaging, as were the polystyrene balls and the plastic wrapping. In fact, in the entire seventeen years I was there, we never brought any actual packaging, apart from courier packs.
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