The Paperless Office: Myth or Reality?
Filed under Life, Technology![]() |
| Photo by apjpix |
Our desire for the illusive paperless office has been around for many years. So, are we any closer to achieving this seemingly impossible dream with recent technological advances, or are we still consigned to emptying the shredder and waste bins every other day?
The concept of the paperless office is certainly nothing new. In 1975, Business Week published an article on “The Office of the Future”. Much of what was predicated in that article has since come true, thanks largely to the release of the now ubiquitous IBM PC in 1981.
However, since the release of the aforementioned PC, rather than decreasing, paper usage in offices doubled in the following 20 years, eventually stabilising around the millennium; hardly a success for the supposed paperless office!
According to the Economist however, since 2001 office paper usage has actually decreased. So, it looks like we’ve finally turned the corner in our paper consumption, but does this mean that we’re close to realising the dream of the paperless office, or do we still have a way to go?




