The Paperless Office

In the early 90's, before PC's and email were widely adopted, I remember seeing a news report about a company that had adopted a 'Paperless Office' policy. As such the company's Post Room was the only place that would handle 'dead tree' technology. All incoming mail was scanned internally emailed to the respective employee. The original document would then be archived or shredded. The Post Room also had the only printer in the office which was used for generating outgoing correspondence.

The report predicted that this was how we would all soon be working which obviously didn't happen.

In fact pretty much the reverse has. The Post Room has effectively been bypassed by e-mail and in the main we still print out most of the documents that we're expected to read, most of which are generated internally by co-workers.

I just can't help wondering, however, if we didn't miss a trick somehow. Wouldn't life be better without paper. Maybe I've been too harsh on the Kindle with my earlier post and there is a place for an e-reader. It's probably a better reason for adoption than being able to read Jackie Collin's latest knee trembler on the bus.