By Jo Best, 31 October 2003 16:10
NEWS The paperless office is a myth, according to a report from the University of California, Berkeley, with technology actually causing more of data pile-up than ever before.
Around 800MB of data is now created for every human being on the planet, an amount that's growing at around 30 per cent since 1999, according to the study, which investigated data use last year.
While the theory behind the electronic office was that it would cut down on the amount of data and storage a company would need, IT is responsible for burying the modern office under a data mountain, as firms store data electronically and then print themselves off a hard copy for good measure. As a result, data stored on paper formats has risen by 43 per cent over the last three years.
Data headaches might be keeping CIOs up at night, but the storage companies are rubbing their hands together. The major beneficiary of the data overload is the hard drive information stored on them has more than doubled since 1999.
In the digital world, the majority of data traffic was down to people calling each other on the phone, clocking up an impressive 98 per cent.
However, one area where tech is helping to cut down on the data mountain is photography the advent of digital cameras and camera phone is helping to put people off hard copies of their holiday snaps.
Comments
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1. john dmohowski
While the paperless office may prove to be a myth, the near paperless office is certainly approaching. The reason paper proliferates is that we still place ourselves in the data stream - taking data, reducing it to printed form and then processing data and then printing out the analysis. This is behavior that will change as web services (machines to machine communications) and our trust in back-ups, storage media and remote access alleviate the need to mediate these activities. Yet we print out the occasional report for offline reading or for carting to non-networked environments or archiving for easy retrieval (those piles of paper on our desk) so we will never be completely paperless.
2. Paul Neale
Until government legislation and the law is updated to recognise digital versions of information as a legal document, companies will continue to be obliged to keep paper copies of contractual documents.
The paperless office is perfectly feasible outside of that bureaucratic paradigm.
3. Malcolm Ripley
I agree with john that as trust in electronic storage increases the amount of paper will decrease. However another reason for all that paper is convenience. There is still nothing as convenient and easy on the eye as a piece of paper to read your data from. Flicking through several sheets (especially books !) is a damn sight easier than scrolling.
I believe an electronic solution will come but not until the interface between human and computer changes. Mice, scrolling windows and laptops are not the answer.
Finally how do you scribble notes on a laptop as easy as paper ?