That 'paperless office' prediction from a 1975 magazine still makes me laugh

I was digging through some old tech magazines at a thrift store in Portland last weekend and found a 1975 issue claiming we'd be completely paperless by 1995. I work in an office and we still print out 500 pages a week just for meeting agendas... has anyone else's workplace actually cut down on paper?

2 comments

2 Comments

tarak173d ago

Did the magazine happen to mention who was supposed to pay for all those expensive computers and printers everyone would need? Most small offices I know still rely on paper because the upfront cost of going fully digital is way higher than just buying a few reams. Plus, I bet that 1975 article assumed everyone would have perfect handwriting recognition and scanners that actually work, which is still a joke today. My dentist's office just switched to tablets for intake forms, but they still print out a copy for my file because the software crashes every third patient. It seems like paper is the backup plan when technology fails, and technology fails a lot. So really, the prediction was mostly right about going digital, it just forgot that paper is way more reliable than a server going down.

garcia.charles3d ago

What about the environmental cost of all that e-waste though?