Here’s my June column from the Yaletown View, written somewhat hastily while abroad:
I’m in Ireland this week, doing some business and tracking down some ancestors. Unfortunately, in the search for the latter, I forgot an important document back in Vancouver. I visited a Norman house in County Kilkenny that my forefathers once owned, but I failed to bring along my family tree.
I have the short-term memory of a guppy, so forgetting things is an hourly occurrence for me. Usually when I forget some data (after all, that’s all paper is—a storage medium for data), computers and the Internet come to my rescue. I can either look up a fact, or access my computer remotely for missing files or email messages. I also keep a weblog, which acts as a backup brain for recent discussion topics or subjects of interest.
Unfortunately, my family tree came from a great-aunt who is mad for genealogy but not computers. It’s drawn by hand, and I haven’t replicated it on my PC yet. So, the page sits lonely and useless on my desk, 8683 kilometres away. This—its inability to be in more than one place at a time–is the great shortcoming of paper.
Paper, or its predecessor papyrus, has been around as a technology for a very long time. About 5000 years, in fact. Modern paper hasn’t really changed since it was invented in China about 105 A.D. It’s served us very well in that time—enabling us to record and distribute knowledge in ways that have changed the world again and again. And, in light of the Dead Sea scrolls, it’s pretty durable. However, paper’s usefulness is on the wane.
Consider the restrictions of a piece of paper compared to computer data: It’s difficult and time-consuming to copy (and the copy isn’t exactly the same as the original), you can’t find a phrase or sentence by searching for keywords, and computers can’t read it. One advantage of paper is that you can fold it up and put it in your pocket. In a world of universal Internet access and mobile devices, that feature is becoming less and less compelling. Why store one address on a PostIt in your pocket when you can store all of them on your cell phone, PDA or laptop?
Singapore hopes to eliminate paper money by 2010, and other nations aren’t far behind. Much to the duress of civil rights advocates, many governments are moving to an electronic voting system. Political watchdogs say (and they’re right) that without a paper backup, electronic elections are much easier to fix. While the paperless office is still a myth, PDAs, cell phones and the Web have made a dent in how much paper flows around the workplace.
You might dismiss me as a columnist frustrated by his own forgetfulness, and point out that it’s not the paper’s fault that I forgot it. That’s true, but that doesn’t help me obtain my family tree, does it? In my dotage, when I pass on the family tree (before just passing on) to my great nephew, I’ll be certain to do it in a format that both he and his computer can consume. The way things are going, mind you, I’ll be unable to tell the two of them apart.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
The paperless office will always be a myth, and the piles we make with them better represent the way we humans think.
That is Malcolm Gladwell’s argument in The Social Life of Paper: http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_03_25_a_paper.htm
I don’t think paper is going to completely disappear. Take books, for example: they’re easier to read than anything electronic, at least at this point. They’re satisfying and tactile. I love the smell of old books, that slightly dusty, ponderous scent that speaks of great age, authority, and mystery.
That may just be my age, though. I wonder if my children will feel the same way, or if they will view books as non-searchable smelly heavy things.
Paper wont disappear till there is a seamless and attractive alternative. Say for example you had some sort of E-book machine, beyond the handheld PDA’s and specially designed to /act/ like a book. Fit the book with flash memory to hold a number of books, and hook that sucker up to the internet and you’ve got a copywrite war to rival and perhaps outdo the one with the RIAA & MPAA. Basicly, what I’m saying is that is that its possible to do the same with books as has been done with music and movies. Paper is just so inefficient, offering a limited amount of space considering and taking up so much space in the end. -_-
Like, I use a little notepad for work, what I’d give for a electronic notepad that can fit in my pocket and be writeable without having to be a freaking 200 dollar PDA I wont use (To the fullness). Oh, also paper sucks in that it it tears and gets lost somewhere. With such a “notepad” device I’d stop buying paper notepads with maybe 50 sheets in all and have unlimited amount of space and have it all in one place to look up later. Of course the only way any of this is going to get done is if people realize that simple is better sometimes and that they should stop trying to stuff so many different functions into one device. Sure it works, but only at sacraficing quality in one area or another.