by Allen Teal

Created on: May 29, 2009

A true paperless society is probably never going to happen. The reason is that the only high tech device needed to recall what has been written on paper is a pair of working human eyes. Within the last few decades, society has witnessed the virtual death of various forms of electronic media. Vinyl records, eight-track tapes, cassette tapes, 5 1/4 inch and 3 1/2 inch floppy disks, and reel-to-reel tapes are just of few of the more prominent ones.

Changing technology can render data stored on old fashioned electronic media unreadable.

Without the technology available to read the data on these storage devices, everyday people can be left without access to their information. The magnetic media can fail or heads can crash. Either of these can effectively cause the loss of huge amounts of data. While ink and paper have their own list of short comings, most people feel better with access to this form of storage media as a reliable back up over the long term. Having said this, there are huge advantages to becoming much more paperless than the majority of people are today.

Less paper means more trees.

Even with paper recycling efforts running at maximum, thousands of trees find their way into the pulp mills of the world everyday. While conservationists would argue that the wise harvesting of trees is good for the environment and the forests, most pulp mills do not harvest trees. They encourage clear cutting of the forests that leaves no tree with bark safe from chain saws. The manufacture of paper does not require mature trees ready for harvesting. It only requires wood of any shape and size.

There is less need for paper storage.

Something has to happen to all of that paper with important information recorded on it. Most of it goes into file cabinets and storage boxes to be held for indefinite amounts of time. Often, this storage can result in huge amounts of paper be held for decades or longer. The space needed to hold all of this paper can fill up thousands of square feet of storage space. Any shift toward less paper means that the cost of storage over the long term can drop dramatically. Often, local households can store a dozen or more boxes of old paper documents. This is easily enough to make a family need to give up a few closets or large sections of basement or garage flooring space to store the paper.

Information can be accessed more rapidly.

Trying to find an old written document that has been stored for 20 years can require hours of

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>