This article in The Economist points up some reasons. It notes first that while the technologies – in this case the use of networked computers, software for creating documents and cheap storage – made it possible to exchange and read documents electronically, people’s habits did not change immediately. They still tended to send documents electronically but then printed them out to read. A book in fact came out in 2001 called “The Myth of the Paperless Office” documenting how printing and the use of paper had exploded as networked PCs began to become ubiquitous.
But as often happens with technology, beneath the surface consumer behavior and technologies were changing. Software got more powerful so documents could be tagged, searched and stored much more easily. Systems to search and identify stored documents for easy retrieval emerged. Storage technologies became more reliable. Documents were increasingly stored “in the cloud” or on the Internet’s servers in various places, making them easier to retrieve from anywhere. And most importantly younger workers, more comfortable with reading documents on digital devices and more in command of the technologies and their power, began to take over.
The result? The very year that “The Myth of the Paperless Office” came out, paper use in offices began to decline. As with all technology trends though, this one is a bit more complex. As Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future notes, when cars began to become more widely used, the use of horses at first declined. But today, there are as many horses in the U. S. as there were in the 19th century. Only today they are not used for general transportation – cars dominate in that space – but rather fill niche uses, generally riding for pleasure and other uses such as polo.
So it is with paper according to The Economist. High end, high quality paper – used for printing pictures for example – is the one area of the paper market that is growing. That makes sense as people want to print and share pictures, graphics and the like and can’t easily pass around a PC with a display on it. Still, even that may change with time as new forms of “paper” that display pictures electronically are developed.
The gradual elimination of paper makes sense for a number of reasons. Electronic documents have much more utility because they can easily be shared, stored and searched for key information. They increase productivity dramatically. And they eliminate the waste of paper that only goes into landfills, reducing costs for everyone. I think the same types of forces are encouraging the use of broadband to help improve health care, improve energy efficiency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve education. I’ve made this point before in my blog posts but I do believe we are rapidly approaching an inflection point where broadband can help us address these issues as a society through widespread adoption and better use of broadband and ICT technologies. The trends with regard to the “paperless office” give me even more hope that the future of broadband is bright.