by xe

Created on: April 13, 2009   Last Updated: April 22, 2009

Saving money and the environment are easily reached rewards of going paperless; the trick is actually getting there. If you claim that your office has gone paperless, then why is there a printer on the network? Do you realize that the main contributor to the huge increase in office paper consumption over the last decades has been the desktop computer? Yes, that very device that should have decreased the reliance on the printed word and sheets of paper has in fact performed to accomplish exactly the opposite.

In the 1970's and into the 1980's, office communications were either hand-written or typed on a typewriter. If multiple copies were necessary (note I say necessary and not desired) then either carbon paper was used or the original was duplicated on a copy machine. Because typing and correcting an original was a visible use of resources and a time and labor expense, we were somewhat frugal in their use and abuse. If we were careless in our original wording, the person doing the typing would let us know after the second or third re-do that we needed to be more careful when we wrote it in the first place.

And, we have now advanced this issue dramatically through the use of - Color! It used to be that a presentation was written, and the words had to be selected to express ideas succinctly and accurately. Today, advertisers of these machines and software are proud to tell us that the use of color has become so important that without it your ideas are dull, boring and meaningless. The person who perfects the video-game aspect of computer presentations, with little pictures moving around and flashing, must certainly have a far superior idea to the one presented using the written word alone! Indeed, there are those who would go so far as to not consider an engineer or scientist for employment unless they could demonstrate proficiency in these eye-candy aspects of entertainment we call presentations.

And nothing hand-written could possible be of any value to society, could it? The thought, the concept, the idea, the expression of thoughts is subservient to the flashy use of color and animation. Plus, any uttering that can be created is surely worthy of being electronically beamed to countless others so that they, too, can transfer it to - a piece of paper! Or, if we really like something we see on the web, we feel compelled to print multiple copies to hand out - plus a few more than we think we might need - so we can be assured of throwing them almost immediately into the trash.

But then, since we are so proud that we learned how to recycle, we even feel good about that, now don't we? What if we didn't "cycle" so much to start with - then the added expense of the "re-" part could be totally avoided at great savings to company, society and environment. The desk-top computer - enabler to the massive waste of paper. Who could have predicted that?

Learn more about this author, xe.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.