The Paper Chase: When Less is More

I'm a little confused. Or perhaps, perplexed. I thought the world had changed significantly since June 30th, 1975. For starters, I wasn't born yet. But that year saw The Thrilla in Manilla, the first episode of Saturday Night Live, and, perhaps the first ever "school shooting" committed by a young man named Robert Poulin in Ottawa. It's 2012, and we still have professional fighting (although a little more violent), we're still watching Saturday Night Live (although it's a little tired), and, unfortunately, that school shooting wasn't the last we'd see in our lifetimes.

In the deeper annals of history, rest the thoughts and words of a man named George Pake, head of a Xerox research facility in Palo Alto, California. A 1975 Business Week article entitled The Office of the Future, cited Pake's vision as follows:

Pake says that in 1995 his office will be completely different; there will be a TV-display terminal with keyboard sitting on his desk. "I'll be able to call up documents from my files on the screen, or by pressing a button," he says. "I can get my mail or any messages. I don't know how much hard copy [printed paper] I'll want in this world."

It seems that Pake was onto something. While not all of us had a fully functioning network terminal at our fingertips in 1995, we were all using localized systems for word processing, accounting and maybe even a little electronic communication (what ever happened to ICQ?). Today, as I sit at my desk with my keyboard, in front of my TV-display terminal, calling-up documents on my screen, I think to myself, "I'm not sure how much of this paper I want in my world." Yet, here it is, choking me and my shiny TV-display on all sides. Reams and stacks of hapless tree-guts. Colourful folders ripe with file opening sheets, conflict searches, invoices, letter copies, and faxes: it’s all here in its fibrous glory. When will the needless killing stop?

This came to mind recently when a colleague forwarded a copy of some presentation notes he received respecting the ease of going paperless: it was a five page paper hand-out. At a hundred hand-outs for the session, you’ve got one standard package of bleached white paper. It was like David Suzuki drove to a tar sands protest in a Hummer with the doors off and the air conditioner running. Was the handout intentionally comic, or just a tragic commentary on the unending and painfully mythical quest for the paperless office?

Most statistics suggest that the per-capita consumption of paper, at a minimum, doubled between the early 1980’s and the early 2000’s. Statistics Canada found that per-capita consumption of paper by Canadians rose 93.6 percent between ’83 and ’93. This, despite that the adoption of digital technology and digital communication devices rose rapidly at the same time, such that virtually all workplaces were connected to the internet by 2003 when our paper usage reached is highest. I suspect paper consumption is positively correlated with declarations from career managers that the office is "going paperless", and I feel those declarations are on a steady rise.

It seems most likely that Jerven's Paradox is at work when it comes to paper use. You see, the first step in the improvement of our office systems was to improve our production of paper documents, which led to an increase in demand for paper, which led to a subsequent increase in efficient supply of paper, which also benefited from new production technology, and which, altogether, led to a cheaper supply of paper. Apparently, when it's easy and cheap to use something, well, humans tend to use more of it, whether it’s good for us or not. Think Ryan Seacrest, or high-fructose corn syrup.

You see, making such grand paper-reduction declarations ensures you get a round of fancy technology and the latest gimmicks in the name of "efficiency" and "cost savings". Never mind the African children who we enslaved by warlords to extract the rare-earth elements required to power your mighty paper-replacement widget - you're doing it to save the planet, and to save your clients time and money.... except, of course, the money your office spent on your new widget, and the additional time you now spend on Facebook... and shopping for more widgets to improve your current widget. If you could just find the damn charger and a case that was actually practical you really would be able to go paperless... that is, if everyone else would cooperate. If all those other people would just committ to going paperless, you wouldn't have to worry about their need for hard copies and you really would be able to commit to going paperless. And management just isn't following through with a good system for electornic documents - if it was just easier to store them efficiently, peolple would do it - but it takes, like, 5 clicks at this stage. That's a lot of waisted time. And of course, you'd probably need a new widget, because, if you were fully paperless well… let's face it, this one just isn’t working out.

You know what, you should probably just cc your assistant with that email for now and get her to throw it on the file, becaue, well - you never know. Hell, just print it out now and write a little diary date on it - that'll just be easier.... for now… until management gets serious about committing to going paperless. Where was that hand-out on going paperless anyway?: It’s somewhere around here. You should really get a copy for management. Hey - Facebook alert!