That rare creature exists...if you let it gambol freely through the digital pastures. Can you run a paperless office? Yes. Do I run one? Almost. Okay...no.
*
Wilf Lancaster was an information expert who envisioned a paper-free society. Are we living in that society now? On a global level, no.
Through the haze, the future happens all around us in the here and now...in fits and starts. We're still in need of paper.
Wilf didn't invent the paperless office. He considered society. The paperless office sounds as though it is an advertising slogan, and with good reason.
IBM wanted to sell IBM. The corporation needed to flog its International Business Machines. How do you go about selling arcane devices seen as part-electrickery and much-wizardry?
You promote convenience. Solve a problem. Save people time, effort, energy, cash, or all of the above.
*
Why am I thinking about the paperless office? I'm going through the vault again. Every few centuries, I mountaineer my way through stacks of paperwork and decide what to sacrifice.
That time has come, again. Unclutter. And so, I scale the teetering piles and separate wheat from chaff. There's a lot of chaff. But...
I must ask the obvious question, even though I know the answer. Is paper-use down? Significantly, oh yes. Have I eliminated my use of paper? Almost.
And other organisations? The ones my office reels into, in the night. Have they eliminated their use of paper? To a great extent, yes.
A scan of a document is accepted in an e-mail, in place of a piece of paper I "must" post away. This is a widespread move, and has been moving and spreading widely for ages.
Some hold out against convenience, unfortunately. So. No paperless office, not when my office comes into contact with papery offices across the globe.
Some hold out against convenience, unfortunately. So. No paperless office, not when my office comes into contact with papery offices across the globe.
*
I shredded.
Thirteen bags of confetti headed to the great recycling plant in the sky. In the Olden Times, in a year of thirteen moons, I might expect that pile of paper to represent the annual haul.
Now I am shredding back almost half a decade, to generate the same level of material. The vaults are swept clean, once more. Waste paper in the office hasn't been a thing for a long long time.
I find that there's still stuff worth keeping for a few years and then shredding. And I find there are still official organisations that only operate by transfer of paper.
Do I have a chequebook? Yes. When did I last use that? Not once, this year. Hell, I don't even use the PIN when flashing the plastic in public. You flash it now with a wave that's read at a short distance, so I'm not shocked that I haven't used a cheque in over a year...
Actually, I'm more surprised that I used the chequebook around a year-and-a-half back.
Paper money itself is being taken over by the Australian concept of polymer banknotes. And books?
*
Okay, I'm a Kindle author. My books are digital. The advantages of digital storage are vast. Could I convert my paper library into a digital one?
Fuck, no. This trove is bought and paid-for and lurks on shelves that were bought and paid-for. Once I became a Kindle author, did I stop buying paper books?
No.
Why was that the case?
Books bought and stored on an e-reader are easier to ignore than are the books on the stacks. Physical presence tops digital presence as a reminder, if not in many other categories.
Time to conduct a survey. How many books are on my Kindle?
I mean...ignoring test copies. There are plenty of test-bed files on there that I created, to check formatting of my own stories.
Now I see the battery needs charging. And I've just flicked Spaghetti Bolognese off the screen. When did I last have spaghetti? (It's been three days.)
I dropped a splodge of food back to the plate, and there was a mild spattering of sauce - most of which I cleared up at the time.
There are 109 items on my Kindle - there were 110, if we count the wayward spaghetti blob.
Right, then, to the numbers...
There are multiple versions of my stories in various format testing stages, including those ready for publication, and they take up half the number of titles on the Kindle.
Then there are classic literary works that already sit on my shelves as paperbacks and hardbacks - and I downloaded those free books to have a look at different versions and Kindle formatting techniques.
Of 109 items...55 were my files.
And of the remaining 54 files, I paid for...
Only four files...one I selected accidentally and instantly refunded. Meaning the money I spent on buying Kindle books over a five-year period was...£6.64 for three books.
My Kindle was, and is, a device for testing the integrity of the formatting on the Kindle books I write. It doesn't serve as a magical portal to books. Not for me.
Yes, I am still a Kindle author who reads paper books. In that sense, the office is FAR from paperless. (In the time it took to compile this post, two books came into the house and I read them both on the day of arrival. This keeps the backlog down.)
I stared at the bags of shredded paperwork, knowing that I stared at the end of an era. Few documents come into the house. And of those, very few require shredding. So thirteen bags for years of documentation...they represented steep decline of paper-use in the office.
Yet I still have a printer, for the few times I must print material. Shredding is still important, and printing...became more vital than ever, at a lower frequency, but...shredding and printing are in decline.
Thank fuck for that. Ink cartridges are priced in kidneys, these days. We'll never have a paperless society. You could wipe your arse on a Kindle screen, but I'm not recommending it and I'm not speaking from experience.
Instead, I busy myself wiping off the spaghetti.
Fuck, no. This trove is bought and paid-for and lurks on shelves that were bought and paid-for. Once I became a Kindle author, did I stop buying paper books?
No.
Why was that the case?
Books bought and stored on an e-reader are easier to ignore than are the books on the stacks. Physical presence tops digital presence as a reminder, if not in many other categories.
*
Time to conduct a survey. How many books are on my Kindle?
I mean...ignoring test copies. There are plenty of test-bed files on there that I created, to check formatting of my own stories.
Now I see the battery needs charging. And I've just flicked Spaghetti Bolognese off the screen. When did I last have spaghetti? (It's been three days.)
I dropped a splodge of food back to the plate, and there was a mild spattering of sauce - most of which I cleared up at the time.
There are 109 items on my Kindle - there were 110, if we count the wayward spaghetti blob.
Right, then, to the numbers...
There are multiple versions of my stories in various format testing stages, including those ready for publication, and they take up half the number of titles on the Kindle.
Then there are classic literary works that already sit on my shelves as paperbacks and hardbacks - and I downloaded those free books to have a look at different versions and Kindle formatting techniques.
Of 109 items...55 were my files.
And of the remaining 54 files, I paid for...
Only four files...one I selected accidentally and instantly refunded. Meaning the money I spent on buying Kindle books over a five-year period was...£6.64 for three books.
My Kindle was, and is, a device for testing the integrity of the formatting on the Kindle books I write. It doesn't serve as a magical portal to books. Not for me.
*
Yes, I am still a Kindle author who reads paper books. In that sense, the office is FAR from paperless. (In the time it took to compile this post, two books came into the house and I read them both on the day of arrival. This keeps the backlog down.)
I stared at the bags of shredded paperwork, knowing that I stared at the end of an era. Few documents come into the house. And of those, very few require shredding. So thirteen bags for years of documentation...they represented steep decline of paper-use in the office.
Yet I still have a printer, for the few times I must print material. Shredding is still important, and printing...became more vital than ever, at a lower frequency, but...shredding and printing are in decline.
Thank fuck for that. Ink cartridges are priced in kidneys, these days. We'll never have a paperless society. You could wipe your arse on a Kindle screen, but I'm not recommending it and I'm not speaking from experience.
Instead, I busy myself wiping off the spaghetti.
No comments:
Post a Comment