The Paperless / Paper free Office
On June 30th, 1975, an article in Bloomberg Business Week described people’s vision for the office of the future, and the prediction that such an office would be ‘paperless’. Next year will see fifty years since this prediction – why is it still not a fact?
A single sheet (A4) of pristine, bleached white office paper has the equivalent embodied carbon that can power a sixty-watt light bulb for one hour! Therefor the systematic removal of paper in offices across the globe could have a massive carbon impact and in todays climate emergency be an obvious point of change.
The complete adoption of the digital office affords a platform to record, document, communicate and share. By design it is flexible, affording each user complete authorship. The digital interface (primarily the personal computer) adopts the analogue language of the office, familiarising users to a redefined digital space; desktop, documents, folder, file etc. But therein lies a problem, perhaps by not completely separating the analogue definitions (the core language by which an office is described) from the outset, new digital system was flawed. It relied too heavily upon an analogue system to help perpetuate the facilitation of its use.
Why should a document be stored in a folder and that folder deposited in a filing cabinet? Would the generation a new language or system of both storage and retrieval to make a digital platform more dominant?
Surely digital storage can be seamless – generate a document, name the document (anything), store it somewhere (anywhere), return sometime later, try to retrieve the document? The difficulty is this ‘human factor’ – when generating large numbers of documents daily the seed of the problem often stems from the simple process of naming. Large corporations have strict systems but smaller organisations often don’t, resulting in a ‘name it whatever you like’ and ‘find it if you can’ system. Most people have had situations where they are looking for something titled ‘thursday2pm.jpg’ or ‘important-file.pdf’
#paperlessoffice #paperfreeoffice
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One positive impact of the Covid Pandemic was a change to the physical relationship to the office. Employees were not able to access work spaces and were actively encouraged to be remote. Globally the home became the office, and the laptop became its principle tool.
Digital communication flourished during this time – the adoption of meeting platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams became second nature (and still are). Productivity levels were higher than envisaged beyond of the ‘managed’ office environment.
Today sees employees slowly returning (and for some uncomfortably) to their pre pandemic office role. Roads are filled with commuters and the rituals of office life returns – a comfortable habit for many. Perhaps it is this ‘comfort’ factor that is the key in restricting our ability to embrace change?
If we were to change consider the imbedded carbon in the removal of: filing cabinets, folders, pens, pencils, calculators etc, within the physical office environments – let alone paper?
A computer can record, compose, calculate, store, share etc etc, it has a huge capacity beyond its current use. So why are we still writing shopping lists by hand, what is it about pen and paper that is still so valuable today?
Perhaps age has something to do with the adoption of digital technology. Millennials navigate shopping with a digital list documented on their mobile phones, generation X (and beyond) still adopt paper and pen and a method of information storage and retrieval – see lost shopping lists above.
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© Carl Middleton – May 2024.
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