Paperless Office? What Paperless Office?

As printing co-habits with the digital, the ‘paperless office’ is proving a myth.

What are the chances you’ll print this article? Not great – say figures as influential as Bill Gates. Back on 29 October 2005 the Microsoft chairman told The Times that print was nearing obsolescence. “We’re right on the verge of something that could become mainstream,” he told Joe Bolger. The paperless office – first prophesied in a 1975 Business Week article – was becoming reality.

Of course The Times’ interview with Gates was 5 years ago, and we’re still waiting. So what happened? In fact, the failure of the Microsoft chairman’s prediction matches the failure of the Business Week article – which thought paper would be disregarded over the 1980s. It quoted Vincent E. Giuliano of Arthur D. Little, Inc: “by 1990, most record-handling will be electronic." Perhaps the temptation for trend-mongering made Gates and Business Week unrealistic?

Yet the fact remains that you’re unlikely to hold this article. So how to reconcile the lasting value of print to the fact that few articles are now printed? Does the sheer volume of text available (thanks to the internet) mean we’re at least printing more selectively? Has the time spent staring at a computer monitor led us to underestimate the vitality of print? According to Hewlett Packard’s Vice President of Consumer Inkjet Solutions Tuan Tran, this is probably the case.

Speaking in a 23 January interview with MercuryNews.com’s Chris O’Brien, Mr. Tran estimates that the quantity of documents printed has increased 4-5% annually since the early 1990s. We’re not pursuing the paperless office – printing is too “pervasive a human need” to be eliminated by digital trend-mongers. We’ve just placed a greater threshold on what articles make it to paper.

Given the proliferation of text on the net this was inevitable. The volume of words available at a mouse click would be overwhelming were they physically present. Moreover, given the low threshold for publishing on the net, the majority of articles would not be worth reading. Yet HP behavioural and ethnographic studies show our attitude to print hasn’t changed. It remains a valuable means of recording data – with emotional charge unequalled by the internet.

According to MercuryNews.com, Hewlett Packard acknowledges 3 key reasons why printing remains valued: documentation, comprehension and cherishing. Broken down, it amounts to this: we trust paper more than the net to preserve our documents; we find things easier to understand if we’re holding them; we’ve a greater attachment to things if they’re physical. The 2.5 billion photos uploaded each month on Facebook can’t compare to the sentimental value of a framed image.

“I spent hours over the holiday break taking all of our photos and putting them in a leather-bound album," Tran said. "It's a much more personal thing to hand someone. It's an emotional, communicative thing."

So print isn’t going anywhere. Yet isn’t there some means to integrate the digital realm with the paper one more closely? This is exactly what HP is pursuing. For example, the introduction of wireless printers reconciles the emotional benefits of the document with the ‘instant access’ ethos of the internet. Far from pursuing the paperless office then, we’re using digital technology to make printing more accessible – without doing away with its benefits.