The other day I was sitting in the bank watching a clerk copy information off a paper bank transfer to initiate a new wire transfer. Being a busy person I hate inefficiencies, and this was just plain bad.
When I asked why the bank didn't use an electronic copy to speed up the process, the clerk replied
that using an electronic copy can create mistakes and cause liability for the bank. In the same way that people are mistrustful of
electronic elections, they believe that a human being copying from a piece of paper is less prone
to make mistakes than doing the same thing electronically.
I smiled when I heard that, because I know it isn't going to last.
According to Wikipedia, papermaking was developed in China during the early 2nd century. Since becoming the de facto medium for recording knowledge, paper has evolved to also become the medium of transferring information in the modern world. Now, however, paper is being surrounded by an increasing number of digital rivals. We can debate how long it will be before the next generation of e-book readers kills printed books, but the days of paper as an information storage medium are almost over. In this post we look at the role of paper in our information-rich lives, from books and newspapers, to receipts and office documents.
The power of persistent information is awesome. If you have never contemplated what it would be like without it,
just take a moment now to think about it. In a world where passing information is only done orally, information transfer
is very limited and inefficient. The invention of paper and writing was perhaps as important and critical in the development
of modern humans as the invention of language. Persistent information is responsible for both the rise of living organisms (DNA),
and the rise of civilization.
Most of the knowledge that we gain comes to us via the written word. The burning of the library at Alexandria by Julius Casesar is considered to be one of the greatest losses of knowledge of all times. Understandably so, because books used to be a precious commodity in the ancient times, accessible to an extremely limited number of people. With the invention of the printing press, books took off, followed soon after by newspapers. Then, suddenly paper was not only the preferred method of storing knowledge, but also the best way to record and transfer information.
While nobody (yet) minds books, people are increasingly being fed up with receipts, envelopes, bank statements, and other forms of paper as an information transfer medium. We cringe at the lengthy receipts we get after a shopping trip to Costco and at stupid credit card statements like the one below. It is the moments when we see things like this that we realize: this is wrong and this has to go. Once again, Apple has it right before anyone else. At Apple stores, after paying by credit card you're asked for your email address and your reciept is sent to you electronically.
With online banking becoming so ubiquitous we now let out a sigh every time we have to actually write a check. Not only are we annoyed with paper, we are annoyed with the process of hand writing - typing is so much more elegant and cleaner. And the change is not just happening at home, it is also quite visible at work. Yes, we still have a ton of paper around the office - but it is increasingly less. More people are now used to reading off the computer screen without having to print first. PDF is now the official means of corporate bureaucracy.
As mobile devices get smarter, the days of paper as an information transfer medium are nearing an end. In the next decade, we will get rid of receipts, doctors will not be hand writing us referrals, and banking will be done only online. The replacement of paper is not an accident, but a trend. Paper is bulkier, dirtier, less safe and not as good for the environment as its digital competition. Part of the bigger trend towards turning physical things into digital, paper is finally giving in after centuries of reign.
Whatever can be digitized will be digitized. Hardware can not compete with software in elegance, simplicity, and cost.
From the iPhone to online banking, digital things are superior to physical. Soon the clerk in the bank is not going to be retyping
the wire transfer from a piece of paper. Soon we will be electing the president of the United States via electronic voting.
The phobia of digital things belongs to an older generation. The demographic that is growing up on Facebook won't think twice about keying their credit card number into a computer or checking a box and pressing the okay button to vote. But even the older generation is not as technophobic as we think. My mother in law learned to look at pictures of her grandkids on Flickr, and only rarely asks to print the photos. She recognizes the simplicity of digital without fully understanding it.
But not all paper is made equal. Books are not going away as fast as other forms of print. While physical newspapers
and magazines are visibly declining, books are still holding strong. The reason for this is that the experience of reading
a digital book is still inferior to physical. Books are not dirty, but magical. We love the way they feel, we love
to flip through the pages. Wandering through books in the bookstore is an adventure, while ordering a book on Amazon
is still quite dry.
Newspapers, on the other hand, are clearly out of tricks. Online versions are superior, easier to read, quicker to get news out, and more interesting. Magazines are also struggling to reinvent themselves by including more pictures, changing editorial formats, and also rushing to engage their audience online.
The real question is just how important are our physical experiences with paper? Increasingly, they are less and less important. We are open to new ways of consuming information and interacting with it. Amazon's Kindle is an early example of how a digital device can deliver a more valuable reading experience.
And yet, in the end, paper just might have its revenge. E-Paper (Electronic Paper)
holds a promise of combining the flexibility of digital with the feel of physical. It is easy to imagine leaving an e-paper based
newspaper next to your computer each evening and waking up to a fresh copy of New York Times transmitted via a wireless connection.
The newspaper itself would have the physical feel of a traditional printed newspaper, but would also take advantage of the possibilities of digital. You would be able
to interact with the information in the newspaper much like you do now on the iPhone.
A bigger question is - given that we already have the iPhone do we even need e-paper? This is something that only time will tell. If people find newspapers, magazines, and books made out of e-paper interesting then the competition will heat up. But if people will just accept new ways of consuming the information, then the devices we already have today will take over.
After serving civilization for centuries, paper is receding and giving in to new, digital forms of persisting and transfering information. We feel both sentimental and relieved because of our love-hate relationship with paper. The increasing shift towards digitization is visible across industries and sectors. From banks, to grocery stores, to offices and homes, paper objects are losing their status quo as an information medium. Personally, I am happy to see paper go. What about you?
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Alex - interesting post. A good addition to your observations is the recent interview hosted by GigaOM TV - interview with Vyomesh (VJ) Joshi, EVP of Imaging & Printing Group (IPG) at HP - a 24 billion plus business group.
Vyomesh summarized the HP view of the print market - while they control about 28 percent of the PC priniting market, they control only 1.8 percent or so of the web printing market. However, HP sees the evolution of the Newspaper and Book business in much the same way as digital music has evolved from from physical distribution (something most of us will agree). HP is working to capitalize on the web printing market - a must for their printing business. Worth watching - and your audience can draw its own observations.
http://gigaom.com/2008/02/28/the-gigaom-show-hp-evp-vyomesh-joshi/
Posted by: G | March 6, 2008 4:49 AMYour post was very interesting and I agree that the time for paper receipts and paper statements is over-the only bill I am ever late paying is the one I have to pay with a check-but I don't think that we are ready to give up on books yet. While Amazon's Kindle is an interesting new mode to read with, I don' believe that we will see print books disappear in the near future. People enjoy the atmosphere of the library or book store, where they can quietly browse through books. I can't imagine reading an Eric Carle or Patricia Polacco (children's author/illustrators) online. So while it may be that the end is near for paper bills and receipts, I believe paper is not dead quite yet.
Posted by: Cheryl | March 6, 2008 5:20 AMPaper ist still the best storage medium.
Posted by: Marco | March 6, 2008 5:38 AMOr can you tell me a medium that can store information for let's say 100 years at a reasonable price?
I hope what you predict is true. Right now, I have have dozens of folders inside "My Documents" and stacks of paper on my desk.
Regarding books, I hope they don't go away too soon. Maybe I'm old school (I am), but there's nothing like curling up with a good book in the evenings and Kindle just doesn't seem to have the same allure.
Posted by: Paul Chaney | March 6, 2008 5:49 AMHi
The first area to consider in all seriousness here is JUNKMAIL. It hurts the planet for NO REASON whatsoever. One company that has recently launched, called Earthclass Mail has made a good start at eliminating junkmail. How? It scans your mail and puts in ONLINE. This way, you get the option to have them shred and recycle all junkmail.
The company is raising VC investments and is participating on StartupJunkies. Read an article about this on my blog:
http://clixyplays.blogspot.com/2008/03/junkmail-is-dealt-deathblow-with.html
Posted by: angelique van engelen | March 6, 2008 6:14 AMRegards,
Angelique van Engelen
I agree, it is a matter of time before paper is history when it comes to storing and distributing information.
Posted by: SD | March 6, 2008 6:35 AMI even think that books will be gone sooner than many think. Like with all technology we underestimate the impact it will have when people adopt it on a larger scale.
Today we often print longer articles from the web, not because we can't read long texts on the screen but because we want to read somewhere else than by the desk. We want to crawl up in a comfortable chair or sofa, we want to read it on the train or outside in the park. Still the alternative to get this done is by bringing a laptop (too big and heavy) or downloading it to mobile (too small screen). So that leaves us with old paper.
We all know it is only a matter of time before Amazon, Apple or some other company comes with a final solution. A light-weight reading device with wireless internet connection, low battery-consumption and a screen with sufficient size. The Kindle is close but still too ugly for many, if we could get it to mate with the Macbook Air I think the future is here.
When this little companion is here - who in their right mind would continue to print out reports, articles or even buy books that take up shelf-space at home and extra load when travelling?
Those who doubt that printed books will be dead within decades are probably those that still keep gramophone record players and will convert to CD about the same time as DVD:s are dead. To them LP:s are still alive. For most of us LP is as dead as paper will soon be.
The only interesting question is - who will make the iPod of reading? Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sony, HP or...?
You raise some very valid points about how we've moved away from paper. I found it interesting that you connected improving mobile devices with digital information transfer; now that I have a cameraphone, I routinely use it to record information. For instance, when I went to a museum for an academic project, I simply took pictures of the artifact descriptions instead of taking notes.
I do think there's one point missing here, though. While you're quite correct that the continuing popularity of books is due in part to the experience of a paper book, there's also the idea of permanence. I think many people still view the digital as more ephemeral than paper. We're not afraid that our digital files will somehow disappear overnight, but we do make backups and wonder if we'll still be able to read those disks a few years down the road when technology has changed.
Contrast that with books - there's a feeling that a paper book is much more permanent. (In some ways, this probably relates to the physical, tangible nature of a book.) Many people still have books from decades past, and museum collections extend to centuries. We never fear we're going to turn the wrong page and accidentally delete a book.
I'm not sure how accurate this idea of permanence is, since a book can easily be damaged, destroyed, or stolen. But generally, I think we experience the accidental loss of a Word file more often than the loss of a book.
Posted by: theharmonyguy | March 6, 2008 6:53 AMYou did not mention the difficulties of keeping electronic information 'alive.' Electronic information works by standards. As those standards change either the 'old' information has to be brought up to date or it is lost. There are many files that individuals created using software [operating systems and word, etc. processors] that are unrecoverable -- at least to the persons who created the files. My library [University of Iowa] has many books hundreds of years old, but I do not have my 8 inch floppies anymore.
My only point is that it is going to be much more difficult than you have noted. Paper has been a remarkably easy 'standard' to work with. Going electronic is not going to be nearly as easy.
Posted by: Bob Boynton | March 6, 2008 7:53 AMThere is absolutely no chance of this happening for another 20 years.
As a life long ECM consultant I see some very shocking business practices in real life.
A 'top 3' insurance company I am engaged at currently has processes where a customer prints a form and fills it out by hand, mails it in.
The form then gets scanned in and digitized. Great you may think. Wrong!
The from then gets printed again then FedExed to another location and then filed away in a storage facility for 10 years.
So while certain things might get digitized and all the technology is in place and available to speed up business processes a company still has to spend millions of dollars to deal with paper and change the way they do business.
You live too close to Silicon Valley and not the real world where paper is still king.
Posted by: Mark Bean | March 6, 2008 8:27 AMI have yet to see something as versatile like paper electronically. From a righ-brained drawing and mind-map perspective, paper is just superior in my view, I don't enter a meeting without it.
Similarly, my paper-based calendar is far more portable and durable (unlimited battery-life baby) and it gives me an excuse to actually talk to people when I want to sync an appointment instead of doing it via more dissociative means. So my votes for paper, until the real alternatives come along.
So there… :)
Posted by: Vincent | March 6, 2008 9:02 AMWhile Amazon's Kindle is an interesting new mode to read with, I don' believe that we will see print books disappear in the near future. People enjoy the atmosphere of the library or book store, where they can quietly browse through books. I can't imagine reading an Eric Carle or Patricia Polacco (children's author/illustrators) online.
Forward thinking blog to do about practically nothing important
Posted by: Explosion of Traffic rocks southern floridas wigs | March 6, 2008 9:10 AMOk, so who's eyes and vision are not getting affected by staring at screens all day long??? I hope its not just me..
While I fully agree that banks and business should be sending a protected PDF to us with statements invoices and other info (also please send us a file that can be easily imported into some sort of global tool like quicken) I also think that we need to keep some paper and make recycling MANDATORY. cheap printers so we can have temporary items visible on something easy to read makes a lot of sense.
Books will become an elitist way of looking after info. We will definitely see Amazon in the next few years, provide ALL books for the Kindle (and the other devices out by then) at a much cheaper price. Only people who want to spend £20 instead of £5 will buy books.. everyone else will download
Great Article
Posted by: Jez | March 6, 2008 9:54 AMIt may be that what we are seeing (we see this at EchoSign) is something akin to the POTS phone line. Neither mobile nor POTS have killed the good old POTS line -- but they turned it into an industry in perpetual decline. The same may be happening with paper. Moving to a "less paper", rather than "paperless", office ...
Posted by: Jason M. Lemkin | March 6, 2008 12:42 PMAbove someone mentioned the "permanence" of books as being a factor and I agree, but for a different reason.
Walking into someone's home and looking through their books and/or CDs and/or movies is fun. People like doing it and people like to display their "trophies". Look at how many books I have read! See my pretty CDs (as a friend recently told me when I said he should buy songs of iTunes).
Without some way of showing off electronic files, the boastful human will still buy books.
ps. the first thing I thought of when I read the title of the post was Ghostbusters. There's a scene where Egon climbs out from under the desk and a besotted Janine says he must read a lot, his reply was a deadpan: "Print is dead."
Posted by: Hadyn | March 6, 2008 1:05 PMI often discuss this matter with one of my friends. I'm in favor of the e-book and he's against it.
His say is that paper as a medium of information won't vanish as long as we live because we are culturally and genetically too accustomed to it. Paper has existed since long long ago, and all our predecessors have loved it, used it, and passed it on to the next generations. Our DNA is made to love paper. Our culture is based on paper. Our wisdom derives from paper. Thus, it is impossible to alter our mindsets to the paper-free world.
However, if what he claims is true, then how can he explain what happened to music or movie?
Music used to be listened only live in the past days. This form of music has changed into an analog tape, an LD, digitized CD and finally into MP3 which is digital itself. People's attitudes accordingly have changed. The similar things happened to movie.
My say is that people can change their attitudes to anything if it is more convenient, easier, and more beautiful. Books made of paper might be less bulky, easier to print, and more beautiful than books made of stone. But they are bulkier, less easy to handle, and less beautiful than e-books. It may take a while before our attitudes change, but surely they will.
Posted by: takuya514 | March 6, 2008 7:12 PMFor all online backup, file sharing and storage related info, I recommend this website:
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Posted by: Jennifer | March 6, 2008 9:17 PMPaper is better for the environment than electronics.
More paper used -> more trees grown
More electronic used -> more power stations built
Posted by: Ross Parker | March 7, 2008 3:38 AMIn some ways you've missed the point of paper being used in this way. Often it's actually there to create an auditable trail and make it more difficult to falsify the transaction. Read "fraud" in place of "mistakes" in the teller's statement, and you're much closer to the truth.
Consider: To fake an electronic account transaction all you may need to do is crack a username+password. To fake a paper transaction you need to do it at a bank, where security cameras and employees can see you, where there's the handwriting and/or a signature of the bank employee involved, and of course moving that piece of paper around takes time -- which gives the bank or the person who was defrauded a longer window to spot the problem and cancel the transaction.
I'm not saying these problems can't be reasonably solved for electronic access; they can and will. It's just that for now they are still major problems. Paper is, in fact, often "safer" because it's a well-known system and banks have long since established the procedures to work with it. It's the difference between thousands of years of experience vs dozens of years of experience. We'll get there eventually, but we're still in a transition phase right now.
Posted by: Drew Thaler | March 7, 2008 12:42 PMThere's a lot of logic and good ideas in this articles. Here are my three problems with the concept of completely eliminating paper:
1. I'm not willing to rely on a tiny screen to do my reading (I don't use a Blackberry or cellphone text messaging, so I'm just not used to a small screen.)
2. Document editing, which many of us do in our jobs, is something I would have to retrain myself to do without using a pen and the ability to, say, put pages 4 and 33 side by side while scanning my content. Could it be done electronically? I'm sure it could, but, quite frankly, I'd never be comfortable with the results unless I could print out the paper and run my pen over it.
Maybe there's a niche market here: training people how to do online editing and annotation.
3. The other thing that is really needed to eliminate paper is ubiquitous, preferably free wireless Internet coverage or cell phone coverage to ensure access to the Web anywhere, anytime.
If we could get by these three things, paper will probably die.
Even though it will ruin comic books forever. :)
Posted by: Mark DykemanI personally like paper for a few things
1) Books. Definitely, no current technology gives what a "real" book gives. So far, I will stick with it.
2) Drawing or rather doodling. Scribbling on a paper during a meeting or explaining things is very helpful, including the moment when you just crumple your failed efforts and throw them in the trashbin imitating Larry Bird.
I doubt you would do that with ePaper. :)
Posted by: Roland Hesz | March 9, 2008 4:30 AMI largely agree with you, certainly paper as an information storage medium for "data" is outdated, and paper as a transactional mechanism is also cumbersome for most transactions.
However, there are two areas where paper excels:
1. The physical embodiment of knowledge or creativity (not data or information) in a book. This is a niche (people who own more than 100 books) but an important one.
2. Transmission of information to the "bottom of the pyramid" - the mass of the population that does not spend large amounts of time online or even have regular access to email/web.
Posted by: Matthew Josefowicz | March 10, 2008 3:27 PMInteresting post. The trend you signal is clear: paper is receding. What I missed though is the answer to the question why we still use paper? The book "The Myth of the Paperless Office" has lots of answers to this question. For instance, using an Iliad or a Kindle, how to you easily compare pages (flip between them, put them side by side and compare)?
Posted by: Samuel Driessen | March 11, 2008 2:54 AMFurthermore, I think we will keep on using paper, but the reason why is changing/has changed. Paper is more and more used for convenience. So we print a document to be able to read it, comment it, the comments are added to the digital document and the paper one is thrown away (and not archived anymore).
if paper goes out of fashion. what will westerners use then? (to wipe their rear...)
this is serious threat to the 'hygienic' western world!!! It is a conspiracy to entangle west in the dark and dangerous mine of colon cancer by the so called digital researchers. this is a very indirect move. We are always thankful to Chinese for saving the west, by inventing such an important tool!
we must stop this research at all cost, which will left our behind dry, dirty and smelling.
Posted by: american | March 15, 2008 6:23 PMYour digital-only, on-line banking-only world is a disaster I will never accept as rational or welcome. While you may find it difficult to understand, some of us continue to value the traditional way of doing things and will take all possible steps to preserve them.
Posted by: Bob | March 19, 2008 6:43 PM