The Myth of the Paperless Office (Englisch) Gebundene Ausgabe – November 2001
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"If you wish to read anything at all on office management, read this book." Guardian UK "The authors approach their subject with academic rigour, observing real organisations to find out how people like to work." Financial Times "The case for paper is made most eloquently in The Myth of the Paperless Office..." Malcolm Gladwell The New Yorker
Over the past 30 years, many people have proclaimed the imminent arrival of the paperless office. Yet even the World Wide Web, which allows almost any computer to read and display another computer's documents, has increased the amount of printing done. The use of e-mail in an organization causes an average 40 percent increase in paper consumption. This text aims to explain why people continue to use paper in the digital age. In "The Myth of the Paperless Office", Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper use the study of paper as a way to understand the work that people do and the reasons they do it the way they do. Using the tools of ethnography and cognitive psychology and drawing on original case studies in a diverse set of organizations, they look at paper use from the level of the individual up to that of organizational culture. Sellen and Harper show that there are many important lessons to be learned from organizations that have tried to "go paperless". One is that putting new technologies in place doesn't necessarily reduce the amount of paper used. Rather, it may simply shift the point at which documents are printed out.Another is that organizations may pursue paperlessness for the wrong reasons. They may want to get rid of paper simply because it is a symbol of the old-fashioned past, rather than an ineffective technology. Looking closely at paper use also shows why many existing digital technologies are inferior to paper for certain key tasks. For example, current e-books show that designers have paid little attention to the need for people to navigate through, mark up and work across multiple documents as they read. Looking at paper use suggests innovative ways forward for digital reading as well as for other technologies. Until such time as digital technologies can provide equal or better support for many of the tasks that are central to "knowledge work", the future for paper continues to look bright. Rather than pursue the ideal of the paperless office, the authors conclude, we should work toward a future in which paper and electronic document tools work in concert and organizational processes make optimal use of both. Alle Produktbeschreibungen
This book was ground breaking in 2002. As a lover of paper, books, and libraries, I wish Selen and Harper had been right. I would be interested to see an updated edition that addresses the usage of paper today. But as technology has advanced, the argument of the current edition has become outdated.
As another excellent reviewer said, in 2010: "What a difference 8 years makes. ... Selen and Harper's argument does remain relevant and thought-provoking in one important respect. They explain the unique functionalities of paper to argue why paper is better for certain tasks. In the last 8 years, some technologies have started to compete with the functionalities of paper. But [paper] remains more useful than screens for some tasks. Selen and Harper's arguments at least give us the analytical tools to think about whether certain tasks are better suited to paper or computers today."
Today, more than a dozen years since the book was published, many office workers have had computers since childhood.
• Some have very large screens, and some use two or three screens at a time.
• Some office workers (and many travelers) get by with a tablet or smartphone, for many tasks – including reading books as well as email.
• People are indeed using computers more, and printing paper less.
• So we could call it the “paper-less” office …
However, paper still provides useful functionality, e.g., for certain research or editing tasks: when you want to flip back and forth quickly between two pages in different parts of a long document; or when multiple documents need to be viewed in parallel on a larger surface; or when one needs to consult several source documents and notes, while writing or entering data into a new document.
• We can't all perform those tasks efficiently on a smartphone!
• We might need more than two monitors, for some tasks.
• And some of us still prefer the feel of a crisp paper document or handwritten letter, with a "wet ink" signature ...
Today, the final "office work" product is almost always a digital document – unless it needs to be filed in court, or delivered to someone who doesn’t have email.
• After the work is finished, the convenience copies and work papers can usually be shredded.
• Increasingly, paper documents are scanned on receipt -- and saved as electronic documents for improved accessibility, sharing, collaboration, business process workflow, or business continuity.
• Overall, the need for keeping paper records -- and sending them to offsite storage for long-term retention -- is decreasing.
• And the need to retrieve the paper from storage has declined dramatically in recent years -- except when the electronic copies are lost, damaged or disputed.
It is worth noting that human-readable paper records can prove more durable than electronic documents, which may become inaccessible after a few years for a number of technological and behavioral reasons.
• To remain available and readable, electronic documents must be periodically migrated to new media (e.g., every 5 to 10 years)
• The electronic document format also matters: saved documents may become unreadable over time, unless stable format standards are used (such as PDF/A)
• Storage of paper documents may be necessary or advisable, when a person or organization needs to retain (and retrieve) important records over a time horizon measured in decades.
Paper is not dead. It's just resting!
• Unlike that Monty Python parrot ...
• And we're still not sure about Schrodinger's cat ...
If you were able to read all of this review without getting bored and moving on, you should definitely read the book!
• As a bonus, I guarantee that you will learn one new word!