Lawrence Don-Elysyn
Many years back when I was a mite less gray on the sides, I began to read about the “paperless” office. It was one of many promises that technology made to my generation back in the halcyon days of the fifties and sixties.
According to this promise, one day “soon,” we would all use only electronic means to convey information. Paper would be no more. I now consider that promise to be about as realistic as a hovercraft in every garage (by the eighties), pennies-a-year nuclear energy (before 2000), moon bases you regularly fly to on daily shuttle flights (by 2001), and the total elimination of poverty and violence (as soon as we’re elected).
As I look at my office, it seems that paper has become something like an unstoppable fungal growth. It threatens to take over every uninhabited square inch. Paper sits heavy on every desk and overflows from dozens of filing cabinets. How did we get into this paper jam?
Personally, I blame it all on the companies that make copiers. As the computer nerds worked diligently from one side trying to make our world more electronic, the gnomes at the copy companies were working at the opposite end making the paper wholesalers very happy. After all, back in the grand old days, making a copy was a real chore. You had to get a special type of paper. A typist had to type out or somehow transfer the information onto that special paper. The paper had to be inserted into a special machine called a Gestetner, and it took the turning of a big, hard-to-handle crank to produce the desired copies.
It was such an effort that the task was not undertaken flippantly. “Do you really need a copy?” the secretary would ask, evidently hoping you would say “No.” Consequently, few copies were made and the level of paper used seldom got very large.
Then came the contemporary copier. Slip it in one end and the copy slips out the other. Nothing could be easier. We began to hear that horrid phrase around offices everywhere: “Here, let me make you a copy.” The contemporary copier is so efficient that even copying huge reports is no problem. 100 pages? 500 pages? No sweat. Let me make you a copy. Two maybe. Would your dog like one?
We have now gotten to the point where all the extra copies are threatening to choke us. In order to keep some order in all this, we have to spend half our days cleaning out the unrequired copies from the days previous.
“Cleaning your desk, Bob?”
“Sure am.”
“Thought you did that yesterday.”
“No, it was two days ago and I couldn’t even get into my cubicle today.”
“Well, don’t worry, Bob. One day we’ll have a paperless office.”
“Say that one more time and I’ll stuff you full of staples.”
The paperless office is a great idea but as long as copies are easy to make, we won’t see it anytime soon. After all, paper is light, convenient, easy to consult. It doesn’t require batteries. You don’t have to plug it in. You can flip it around quickly and look at several things at once. I get the impression that it won’t die out for a long, long time to come.
Get used to it.
Lawrence is the senior text editor at Bombardier Transportation in St. Bruno, Quebec, Canada. He has been with Bombardier 14 years. He is married (to a lady from Dallas) and has three grown children and two grandchildren. You can reach him at HYPERLINK “lawrence.don-elysyn@ca.transport.bombardier.com” lawrence.don-elysyn@ca.transport.bombardier.com.
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