Paperless office Paper (Redundant) People Problems
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I am asking for some help from people in business. I am working on a paper for school, and would like to know your thoughts and ideas about the paperless office. The focus of my paper is not that technology is ill equipped to handle this, but that the true reason for the paperless office not succeeding is that the people working in these organizations are doing everything in their power to resist the change. I am having trouble locating sources of information to prove my point, and would like to ask permission to site people as sources. The have a main outline, and would just like a personal advantage point from people in the know on if they have experienced or been involved in these areas. I am looking at this from the perspective of a psychological standpoint only. Let me share my outline so far, and if you have any relevant information, please feel free to post back, or e-mail me directly. In advance I am very appreciative of any insight anyone might have to help me in this endeavor. (1) The power of paper. People hording information and unwilling to disseminate it, or let others access it. This is because of intellectual property issues, the value of knowledge, and that keeping paper makes you appear smart, because you are the only one with access to it. (2) The physical aspects of paper. The ease of paper printing and the availability of multiple duplication. The ability to take notes, and highlight. (Sometimes in the absence of ability to do this on a computer screen.) Manipulation, tactile and workability. (3) The trust of paper. There is a physical presence of paper that cannot be denied. Paper provides comfort to a user. It cannot be simply deleted by the stroke of a few keys. Paper cannot be overridden or cleaned. Network administrators can simply move the file to a archive file, without notifying the user. If a person has the physical paper, it must be ripped out of their hand, or moved in the physical presence of the owner. I am trying to focus on only the reasons that the paperless office does not succeed because of users, not because of legal or authentication reasons. I am a new user to code project. I was directed to this group because of my husband, Ray Cassick, who suggested that with the wide variety of people in this group, I just might get some very good responses, that would help me in this focus. I am looking at this solely from the prospective of people (users), because I am trying to p
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I am asking for some help from people in business. I am working on a paper for school, and would like to know your thoughts and ideas about the paperless office. The focus of my paper is not that technology is ill equipped to handle this, but that the true reason for the paperless office not succeeding is that the people working in these organizations are doing everything in their power to resist the change. I am having trouble locating sources of information to prove my point, and would like to ask permission to site people as sources. The have a main outline, and would just like a personal advantage point from people in the know on if they have experienced or been involved in these areas. I am looking at this from the perspective of a psychological standpoint only. Let me share my outline so far, and if you have any relevant information, please feel free to post back, or e-mail me directly. In advance I am very appreciative of any insight anyone might have to help me in this endeavor. (1) The power of paper. People hording information and unwilling to disseminate it, or let others access it. This is because of intellectual property issues, the value of knowledge, and that keeping paper makes you appear smart, because you are the only one with access to it. (2) The physical aspects of paper. The ease of paper printing and the availability of multiple duplication. The ability to take notes, and highlight. (Sometimes in the absence of ability to do this on a computer screen.) Manipulation, tactile and workability. (3) The trust of paper. There is a physical presence of paper that cannot be denied. Paper provides comfort to a user. It cannot be simply deleted by the stroke of a few keys. Paper cannot be overridden or cleaned. Network administrators can simply move the file to a archive file, without notifying the user. If a person has the physical paper, it must be ripped out of their hand, or moved in the physical presence of the owner. I am trying to focus on only the reasons that the paperless office does not succeed because of users, not because of legal or authentication reasons. I am a new user to code project. I was directed to this group because of my husband, Ray Cassick, who suggested that with the wide variety of people in this group, I just might get some very good responses, that would help me in this focus. I am looking at this solely from the prospective of people (users), because I am trying to p
I don't know about paperless, but I do know that some people are too lazy to reduce paper. The main printer that we have allows for double-sided printing without manual feeding, but most people still use one-sided printing even though I emailed the instructions on how to set it up. Also, when I went on job interviews last year, I had my resume printed double-sided. Even though my resume was 3 pages and the two front pages were obviously unrelated, I had to tell plenty of recruiters to turn the first page over. A lot of them commented that a lot of their hiring people will not check and it may cost me a job. I can only assume that all this is because we're used to one sided printing for so long, even though books and magazines that we read are double-sided. "If only one person knows the truth, it is still the truth." - Mahatma Gandhi Web - Blog - RSS - Math
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I am asking for some help from people in business. I am working on a paper for school, and would like to know your thoughts and ideas about the paperless office. The focus of my paper is not that technology is ill equipped to handle this, but that the true reason for the paperless office not succeeding is that the people working in these organizations are doing everything in their power to resist the change. I am having trouble locating sources of information to prove my point, and would like to ask permission to site people as sources. The have a main outline, and would just like a personal advantage point from people in the know on if they have experienced or been involved in these areas. I am looking at this from the perspective of a psychological standpoint only. Let me share my outline so far, and if you have any relevant information, please feel free to post back, or e-mail me directly. In advance I am very appreciative of any insight anyone might have to help me in this endeavor. (1) The power of paper. People hording information and unwilling to disseminate it, or let others access it. This is because of intellectual property issues, the value of knowledge, and that keeping paper makes you appear smart, because you are the only one with access to it. (2) The physical aspects of paper. The ease of paper printing and the availability of multiple duplication. The ability to take notes, and highlight. (Sometimes in the absence of ability to do this on a computer screen.) Manipulation, tactile and workability. (3) The trust of paper. There is a physical presence of paper that cannot be denied. Paper provides comfort to a user. It cannot be simply deleted by the stroke of a few keys. Paper cannot be overridden or cleaned. Network administrators can simply move the file to a archive file, without notifying the user. If a person has the physical paper, it must be ripped out of their hand, or moved in the physical presence of the owner. I am trying to focus on only the reasons that the paperless office does not succeed because of users, not because of legal or authentication reasons. I am a new user to code project. I was directed to this group because of my husband, Ray Cassick, who suggested that with the wide variety of people in this group, I just might get some very good responses, that would help me in this focus. I am looking at this solely from the prospective of people (users), because I am trying to p
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I am asking for some help from people in business. I am working on a paper for school, and would like to know your thoughts and ideas about the paperless office. The focus of my paper is not that technology is ill equipped to handle this, but that the true reason for the paperless office not succeeding is that the people working in these organizations are doing everything in their power to resist the change. I am having trouble locating sources of information to prove my point, and would like to ask permission to site people as sources. The have a main outline, and would just like a personal advantage point from people in the know on if they have experienced or been involved in these areas. I am looking at this from the perspective of a psychological standpoint only. Let me share my outline so far, and if you have any relevant information, please feel free to post back, or e-mail me directly. In advance I am very appreciative of any insight anyone might have to help me in this endeavor. (1) The power of paper. People hording information and unwilling to disseminate it, or let others access it. This is because of intellectual property issues, the value of knowledge, and that keeping paper makes you appear smart, because you are the only one with access to it. (2) The physical aspects of paper. The ease of paper printing and the availability of multiple duplication. The ability to take notes, and highlight. (Sometimes in the absence of ability to do this on a computer screen.) Manipulation, tactile and workability. (3) The trust of paper. There is a physical presence of paper that cannot be denied. Paper provides comfort to a user. It cannot be simply deleted by the stroke of a few keys. Paper cannot be overridden or cleaned. Network administrators can simply move the file to a archive file, without notifying the user. If a person has the physical paper, it must be ripped out of their hand, or moved in the physical presence of the owner. I am trying to focus on only the reasons that the paperless office does not succeed because of users, not because of legal or authentication reasons. I am a new user to code project. I was directed to this group because of my husband, Ray Cassick, who suggested that with the wide variety of people in this group, I just might get some very good responses, that would help me in this focus. I am looking at this solely from the prospective of people (users), because I am trying to p
First off, welcome to CP, Joanne!
JCassick wrote:
because I am trying to prove that people, not information technology is the reason why paperless has not succeeded.
While I agree with much of what you are saying, I disagree with the above statement as an absolute. Let's take a look at paper as technology. I think the salient aspects of paper are in its information retrieval aspect, portability, annotation, and finally, cross-reference management. In some ways, all of the four points I brought up are entangled. For example, there were times at the boat yard when the last six months of invoices needed to be retrieved and compared to each other. Most technological solutions either don't allow for multiple display of the same document type, or, the screen space is so limited it is not easy to visually compare, side by side, multiple documents. To make matters worse, the computer system would organize the various documents by document type. Invoices, work orders, special part orders, labor, time cards, etc. However, the file cabinet literally stored all of these documents together for a particular customer and billing period. So with the paper, you could get a sense of the whole picture. You could spread it out over several desks (this was often done). Now, then next thing you could with paper is annotate it. You could place a check mark on a line item in the custom part order that matched a line item in the invoice. You could review the entire bill and say, wow, this guy has spent $100,000 repairing his boat, let's sell these items at cost to him as a discount. Things like this were often done, and the idea of displaying all this information on a computer screen to make that kind of a decision was prohibitive. So, I have seen, over and over again, the reason is not people for the failure of a paperless office, but rather the limitations of the technology, both software and hardware. And there is another factor you aren't considering: cost. Paper is so much cheaper. A good paper organizational system (including a backup system--the good ol' photo copier) is very inexpensive compared to networks, computers, software, etc. Paper doesn't have bugs, it doesn't lose information when the power goes out, it's easily backed up, it's auditable, it's signable, it's securable, etc. With paper, the infrastructure to support it is minimal. With information technology, the infrastructure support is vast. Beginning with your
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I am asking for some help from people in business. I am working on a paper for school, and would like to know your thoughts and ideas about the paperless office. The focus of my paper is not that technology is ill equipped to handle this, but that the true reason for the paperless office not succeeding is that the people working in these organizations are doing everything in their power to resist the change. I am having trouble locating sources of information to prove my point, and would like to ask permission to site people as sources. The have a main outline, and would just like a personal advantage point from people in the know on if they have experienced or been involved in these areas. I am looking at this from the perspective of a psychological standpoint only. Let me share my outline so far, and if you have any relevant information, please feel free to post back, or e-mail me directly. In advance I am very appreciative of any insight anyone might have to help me in this endeavor. (1) The power of paper. People hording information and unwilling to disseminate it, or let others access it. This is because of intellectual property issues, the value of knowledge, and that keeping paper makes you appear smart, because you are the only one with access to it. (2) The physical aspects of paper. The ease of paper printing and the availability of multiple duplication. The ability to take notes, and highlight. (Sometimes in the absence of ability to do this on a computer screen.) Manipulation, tactile and workability. (3) The trust of paper. There is a physical presence of paper that cannot be denied. Paper provides comfort to a user. It cannot be simply deleted by the stroke of a few keys. Paper cannot be overridden or cleaned. Network administrators can simply move the file to a archive file, without notifying the user. If a person has the physical paper, it must be ripped out of their hand, or moved in the physical presence of the owner. I am trying to focus on only the reasons that the paperless office does not succeed because of users, not because of legal or authentication reasons. I am a new user to code project. I was directed to this group because of my husband, Ray Cassick, who suggested that with the wide variety of people in this group, I just might get some very good responses, that would help me in this focus. I am looking at this solely from the prospective of people (users), because I am trying to p
Don't forget the paperless submission. For example vacation time can be either printed and send to the HR traditionally or filed via webservices (the paperless way). Its not only how the information is stored (printed on paper or stored as a file) but how the data gets transferred. You should add these paperless services to your article. -- http://spaces.msn.com/members/jurgene/[^]
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I am asking for some help from people in business. I am working on a paper for school, and would like to know your thoughts and ideas about the paperless office. The focus of my paper is not that technology is ill equipped to handle this, but that the true reason for the paperless office not succeeding is that the people working in these organizations are doing everything in their power to resist the change. I am having trouble locating sources of information to prove my point, and would like to ask permission to site people as sources. The have a main outline, and would just like a personal advantage point from people in the know on if they have experienced or been involved in these areas. I am looking at this from the perspective of a psychological standpoint only. Let me share my outline so far, and if you have any relevant information, please feel free to post back, or e-mail me directly. In advance I am very appreciative of any insight anyone might have to help me in this endeavor. (1) The power of paper. People hording information and unwilling to disseminate it, or let others access it. This is because of intellectual property issues, the value of knowledge, and that keeping paper makes you appear smart, because you are the only one with access to it. (2) The physical aspects of paper. The ease of paper printing and the availability of multiple duplication. The ability to take notes, and highlight. (Sometimes in the absence of ability to do this on a computer screen.) Manipulation, tactile and workability. (3) The trust of paper. There is a physical presence of paper that cannot be denied. Paper provides comfort to a user. It cannot be simply deleted by the stroke of a few keys. Paper cannot be overridden or cleaned. Network administrators can simply move the file to a archive file, without notifying the user. If a person has the physical paper, it must be ripped out of their hand, or moved in the physical presence of the owner. I am trying to focus on only the reasons that the paperless office does not succeed because of users, not because of legal or authentication reasons. I am a new user to code project. I was directed to this group because of my husband, Ray Cassick, who suggested that with the wide variety of people in this group, I just might get some very good responses, that would help me in this focus. I am looking at this solely from the prospective of people (users), because I am trying to p
I agree with what Marc Clifton has said and I totally disagree with the premise of "...Proving that people, not information technology is the reason why paperless has not succeeded." Paper has far greater utility than the technology that is trying to replace it. The ubiquitousness (SP?) of paper and ease of transmission of paper (in the local sense as in handing a piece of paper to someone) far outweighs the technology substitutions available. Even the internet with all of its advances proves that paper is sometimes just easier. I have often needed to view a document with a diagram and had to scroll the page to see it all which is difficult to do and makes the content difficult to fully grasp. Also, the cost of paper makes it of much greater utility since I can tear a piece of paper out of a notebook and tape it to a server rack for later reference. Also, while the cost of extranous paper (i.e. printing a document of 20 pages multiple times due to a simple change) is easy to see, the cost of the extra power needed to run computer systems, cost of recycling, environmental impact of disposing of older computer equipment, are much harder to see and at the very least seem to be ignored by the "paperless office" pushers. Another key people aspect of paper is that it is simply easier to read than modern computer screens, both CRT and LCD. Yet another people aspect is the need for "multi-tasking" of documents. I often have several printed documents on my desk (design documents, coding guidelines, spec sheets, reports) that I need to refer to while working with consultants or staff while using my computer. As of today, there is no technology that makes it easy to do this, or cost permissive. Tablet PCs seem to be a step in the right direction, but the cost of a tablet PC is simply prohibitve to utility. I suppose that at some point in the future, intelligent paper will be invented that is cheap enought to replace current paper products. It will be able to be printed on, written on, torn in pieces, etc. This intelligent paper will be re-usable, thin, foldable and look much like paper does today. It will be suffeciently cheap that handing a piece of it to someone will not involve a financial transaction. I have a hard time seeing what benefits intelligent paper will be able to deliver at such a price though.
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I am asking for some help from people in business. I am working on a paper for school, and would like to know your thoughts and ideas about the paperless office. The focus of my paper is not that technology is ill equipped to handle this, but that the true reason for the paperless office not succeeding is that the people working in these organizations are doing everything in their power to resist the change. I am having trouble locating sources of information to prove my point, and would like to ask permission to site people as sources. The have a main outline, and would just like a personal advantage point from people in the know on if they have experienced or been involved in these areas. I am looking at this from the perspective of a psychological standpoint only. Let me share my outline so far, and if you have any relevant information, please feel free to post back, or e-mail me directly. In advance I am very appreciative of any insight anyone might have to help me in this endeavor. (1) The power of paper. People hording information and unwilling to disseminate it, or let others access it. This is because of intellectual property issues, the value of knowledge, and that keeping paper makes you appear smart, because you are the only one with access to it. (2) The physical aspects of paper. The ease of paper printing and the availability of multiple duplication. The ability to take notes, and highlight. (Sometimes in the absence of ability to do this on a computer screen.) Manipulation, tactile and workability. (3) The trust of paper. There is a physical presence of paper that cannot be denied. Paper provides comfort to a user. It cannot be simply deleted by the stroke of a few keys. Paper cannot be overridden or cleaned. Network administrators can simply move the file to a archive file, without notifying the user. If a person has the physical paper, it must be ripped out of their hand, or moved in the physical presence of the owner. I am trying to focus on only the reasons that the paperless office does not succeed because of users, not because of legal or authentication reasons. I am a new user to code project. I was directed to this group because of my husband, Ray Cassick, who suggested that with the wide variety of people in this group, I just might get some very good responses, that would help me in this focus. I am looking at this solely from the prospective of people (users), because I am trying to p
JCassick wrote:
people working in these organizations are doing everything in their power to resist the change
I disagree with this, simply because it makes the assumption that people care. They don't. We, as people who work in an office, care only about accessing, processing, sending and storing information in as easy a manner as possible. Everyone's made the comment about paper being easier to read. I'm not sure I agree with that. - It's easier to hold a piece of paper and shuffle it around because CRTs are heavy and resist shuffling. - It's easier to compare two pieces of paper than two documents on the screen because screen size and resolution isn't equivalent to my 5' x 3' desk. (mmm...imagine a 3' x 5' 300dpi screen as a desk...Homer drool...). - It's faster to open a book and read it than boot up a PC, find the document, load it, then start reading. Much, much faster to pick out a piece of paper from a binder. As others have said. I don't think the problem is one of old-school types not willing to let go their tree pulp. I think it's simply a problem of screen real-estate, user interface and convenience. You cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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JCassick wrote:
people working in these organizations are doing everything in their power to resist the change
I disagree with this, simply because it makes the assumption that people care. They don't. We, as people who work in an office, care only about accessing, processing, sending and storing information in as easy a manner as possible. Everyone's made the comment about paper being easier to read. I'm not sure I agree with that. - It's easier to hold a piece of paper and shuffle it around because CRTs are heavy and resist shuffling. - It's easier to compare two pieces of paper than two documents on the screen because screen size and resolution isn't equivalent to my 5' x 3' desk. (mmm...imagine a 3' x 5' 300dpi screen as a desk...Homer drool...). - It's faster to open a book and read it than boot up a PC, find the document, load it, then start reading. Much, much faster to pick out a piece of paper from a binder. As others have said. I don't think the problem is one of old-school types not willing to let go their tree pulp. I think it's simply a problem of screen real-estate, user interface and convenience. You cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
I still think paper is easier to read: after eight hours of staring at a CRT, my eyes *hurt*. Paper doesn't do that. But neither, I'm slowly noticing, does LCD. I think my objections to reading from LCD probably have more to do with the interface - I'd want something more.. booklike - no keyboard, no extra crap. Like a tablet PC, but with a more special purpose OS.
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I am asking for some help from people in business. I am working on a paper for school, and would like to know your thoughts and ideas about the paperless office. The focus of my paper is not that technology is ill equipped to handle this, but that the true reason for the paperless office not succeeding is that the people working in these organizations are doing everything in their power to resist the change. I am having trouble locating sources of information to prove my point, and would like to ask permission to site people as sources. The have a main outline, and would just like a personal advantage point from people in the know on if they have experienced or been involved in these areas. I am looking at this from the perspective of a psychological standpoint only. Let me share my outline so far, and if you have any relevant information, please feel free to post back, or e-mail me directly. In advance I am very appreciative of any insight anyone might have to help me in this endeavor. (1) The power of paper. People hording information and unwilling to disseminate it, or let others access it. This is because of intellectual property issues, the value of knowledge, and that keeping paper makes you appear smart, because you are the only one with access to it. (2) The physical aspects of paper. The ease of paper printing and the availability of multiple duplication. The ability to take notes, and highlight. (Sometimes in the absence of ability to do this on a computer screen.) Manipulation, tactile and workability. (3) The trust of paper. There is a physical presence of paper that cannot be denied. Paper provides comfort to a user. It cannot be simply deleted by the stroke of a few keys. Paper cannot be overridden or cleaned. Network administrators can simply move the file to a archive file, without notifying the user. If a person has the physical paper, it must be ripped out of their hand, or moved in the physical presence of the owner. I am trying to focus on only the reasons that the paperless office does not succeed because of users, not because of legal or authentication reasons. I am a new user to code project. I was directed to this group because of my husband, Ray Cassick, who suggested that with the wide variety of people in this group, I just might get some very good responses, that would help me in this focus. I am looking at this solely from the prospective of people (users), because I am trying to p
JCassick wrote:
(2) The physical aspects of paper.
These are probably the only times I find myself using paper at work: (a) It's hard to curl up with an online version of a good spec or whitepaper in bed. Hardcopy rules. (b) I seem to be able to proofread my own specs much easier when perusing a hardcopy. This may seem ironic, since all my editing is done electronically. /ravi My new year's resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Music | Articles | Freeware | Trips ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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I am asking for some help from people in business. I am working on a paper for school, and would like to know your thoughts and ideas about the paperless office. The focus of my paper is not that technology is ill equipped to handle this, but that the true reason for the paperless office not succeeding is that the people working in these organizations are doing everything in their power to resist the change. I am having trouble locating sources of information to prove my point, and would like to ask permission to site people as sources. The have a main outline, and would just like a personal advantage point from people in the know on if they have experienced or been involved in these areas. I am looking at this from the perspective of a psychological standpoint only. Let me share my outline so far, and if you have any relevant information, please feel free to post back, or e-mail me directly. In advance I am very appreciative of any insight anyone might have to help me in this endeavor. (1) The power of paper. People hording information and unwilling to disseminate it, or let others access it. This is because of intellectual property issues, the value of knowledge, and that keeping paper makes you appear smart, because you are the only one with access to it. (2) The physical aspects of paper. The ease of paper printing and the availability of multiple duplication. The ability to take notes, and highlight. (Sometimes in the absence of ability to do this on a computer screen.) Manipulation, tactile and workability. (3) The trust of paper. There is a physical presence of paper that cannot be denied. Paper provides comfort to a user. It cannot be simply deleted by the stroke of a few keys. Paper cannot be overridden or cleaned. Network administrators can simply move the file to a archive file, without notifying the user. If a person has the physical paper, it must be ripped out of their hand, or moved in the physical presence of the owner. I am trying to focus on only the reasons that the paperless office does not succeed because of users, not because of legal or authentication reasons. I am a new user to code project. I was directed to this group because of my husband, Ray Cassick, who suggested that with the wide variety of people in this group, I just might get some very good responses, that would help me in this focus. I am looking at this solely from the prospective of people (users), because I am trying to p
I think your conclusions are a bit harsh :) True, 100% paperless offices are rare (nonexistant?), but the computer technology did help reduce the use of paper in office work. Many forms, requests, etc, are submited and processed electronically now. I can't even imagine the situation where I would need to submit all these horrible SOX forms on paper (shudder). XForms rules :cool:
My programming blahblahblah blog. If you ever find anything useful here, please let me know to remove it.
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First off, welcome to CP, Joanne!
JCassick wrote:
because I am trying to prove that people, not information technology is the reason why paperless has not succeeded.
While I agree with much of what you are saying, I disagree with the above statement as an absolute. Let's take a look at paper as technology. I think the salient aspects of paper are in its information retrieval aspect, portability, annotation, and finally, cross-reference management. In some ways, all of the four points I brought up are entangled. For example, there were times at the boat yard when the last six months of invoices needed to be retrieved and compared to each other. Most technological solutions either don't allow for multiple display of the same document type, or, the screen space is so limited it is not easy to visually compare, side by side, multiple documents. To make matters worse, the computer system would organize the various documents by document type. Invoices, work orders, special part orders, labor, time cards, etc. However, the file cabinet literally stored all of these documents together for a particular customer and billing period. So with the paper, you could get a sense of the whole picture. You could spread it out over several desks (this was often done). Now, then next thing you could with paper is annotate it. You could place a check mark on a line item in the custom part order that matched a line item in the invoice. You could review the entire bill and say, wow, this guy has spent $100,000 repairing his boat, let's sell these items at cost to him as a discount. Things like this were often done, and the idea of displaying all this information on a computer screen to make that kind of a decision was prohibitive. So, I have seen, over and over again, the reason is not people for the failure of a paperless office, but rather the limitations of the technology, both software and hardware. And there is another factor you aren't considering: cost. Paper is so much cheaper. A good paper organizational system (including a backup system--the good ol' photo copier) is very inexpensive compared to networks, computers, software, etc. Paper doesn't have bugs, it doesn't lose information when the power goes out, it's easily backed up, it's auditable, it's signable, it's securable, etc. With paper, the infrastructure to support it is minimal. With information technology, the infrastructure support is vast. Beginning with your
At the MVP summit, Steve Ballmer was doing this talk and was talking about Vista, Pocket devices and Smart devices for close to an hour. At the end of the talk, when he was answering audience questions, he suddenly took out a small notepad from his pocket and wrote down notes on it using his pen. An MVP stood up and asked him why he didn't use his Pocket PC or his Tablet PC or some such device - he didn't have an answer, so he just smiled that smile of his :-)
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At the MVP summit, Steve Ballmer was doing this talk and was talking about Vista, Pocket devices and Smart devices for close to an hour. At the end of the talk, when he was answering audience questions, he suddenly took out a small notepad from his pocket and wrote down notes on it using his pen. An MVP stood up and asked him why he didn't use his Pocket PC or his Tablet PC or some such device - he didn't have an answer, so he just smiled that smile of his :-)
Nishant Sivakumar wrote:
when he was answering audience questions, he suddenly took out a small notepad from his pocket and wrote down notes on it using his pen.
That's priceless! Marc VS2005 Tips & Tricks -- contributions welcome!
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First off, welcome to CP, Joanne!
JCassick wrote:
because I am trying to prove that people, not information technology is the reason why paperless has not succeeded.
While I agree with much of what you are saying, I disagree with the above statement as an absolute. Let's take a look at paper as technology. I think the salient aspects of paper are in its information retrieval aspect, portability, annotation, and finally, cross-reference management. In some ways, all of the four points I brought up are entangled. For example, there were times at the boat yard when the last six months of invoices needed to be retrieved and compared to each other. Most technological solutions either don't allow for multiple display of the same document type, or, the screen space is so limited it is not easy to visually compare, side by side, multiple documents. To make matters worse, the computer system would organize the various documents by document type. Invoices, work orders, special part orders, labor, time cards, etc. However, the file cabinet literally stored all of these documents together for a particular customer and billing period. So with the paper, you could get a sense of the whole picture. You could spread it out over several desks (this was often done). Now, then next thing you could with paper is annotate it. You could place a check mark on a line item in the custom part order that matched a line item in the invoice. You could review the entire bill and say, wow, this guy has spent $100,000 repairing his boat, let's sell these items at cost to him as a discount. Things like this were often done, and the idea of displaying all this information on a computer screen to make that kind of a decision was prohibitive. So, I have seen, over and over again, the reason is not people for the failure of a paperless office, but rather the limitations of the technology, both software and hardware. And there is another factor you aren't considering: cost. Paper is so much cheaper. A good paper organizational system (including a backup system--the good ol' photo copier) is very inexpensive compared to networks, computers, software, etc. Paper doesn't have bugs, it doesn't lose information when the power goes out, it's easily backed up, it's auditable, it's signable, it's securable, etc. With paper, the infrastructure to support it is minimal. With information technology, the infrastructure support is vast. Beginning with your
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I agree with what Marc Clifton has said and I totally disagree with the premise of "...Proving that people, not information technology is the reason why paperless has not succeeded." Paper has far greater utility than the technology that is trying to replace it. The ubiquitousness (SP?) of paper and ease of transmission of paper (in the local sense as in handing a piece of paper to someone) far outweighs the technology substitutions available. Even the internet with all of its advances proves that paper is sometimes just easier. I have often needed to view a document with a diagram and had to scroll the page to see it all which is difficult to do and makes the content difficult to fully grasp. Also, the cost of paper makes it of much greater utility since I can tear a piece of paper out of a notebook and tape it to a server rack for later reference. Also, while the cost of extranous paper (i.e. printing a document of 20 pages multiple times due to a simple change) is easy to see, the cost of the extra power needed to run computer systems, cost of recycling, environmental impact of disposing of older computer equipment, are much harder to see and at the very least seem to be ignored by the "paperless office" pushers. Another key people aspect of paper is that it is simply easier to read than modern computer screens, both CRT and LCD. Yet another people aspect is the need for "multi-tasking" of documents. I often have several printed documents on my desk (design documents, coding guidelines, spec sheets, reports) that I need to refer to while working with consultants or staff while using my computer. As of today, there is no technology that makes it easy to do this, or cost permissive. Tablet PCs seem to be a step in the right direction, but the cost of a tablet PC is simply prohibitve to utility. I suppose that at some point in the future, intelligent paper will be invented that is cheap enought to replace current paper products. It will be able to be printed on, written on, torn in pieces, etc. This intelligent paper will be re-usable, thin, foldable and look much like paper does today. It will be suffeciently cheap that handing a piece of it to someone will not involve a financial transaction. I have a hard time seeing what benefits intelligent paper will be able to deliver at such a price though.
Matt Gullett wrote:
I have often needed to view a document with a diagram and had to scroll the page to see it all
Isn't that a reflection on the poor design choice by early computer makers when they decided to produce monitors with wide screens instead of tall screens? That aspect ratio does not support a document-centric view of the world.
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First off, welcome to CP, Joanne!
JCassick wrote:
because I am trying to prove that people, not information technology is the reason why paperless has not succeeded.
While I agree with much of what you are saying, I disagree with the above statement as an absolute. Let's take a look at paper as technology. I think the salient aspects of paper are in its information retrieval aspect, portability, annotation, and finally, cross-reference management. In some ways, all of the four points I brought up are entangled. For example, there were times at the boat yard when the last six months of invoices needed to be retrieved and compared to each other. Most technological solutions either don't allow for multiple display of the same document type, or, the screen space is so limited it is not easy to visually compare, side by side, multiple documents. To make matters worse, the computer system would organize the various documents by document type. Invoices, work orders, special part orders, labor, time cards, etc. However, the file cabinet literally stored all of these documents together for a particular customer and billing period. So with the paper, you could get a sense of the whole picture. You could spread it out over several desks (this was often done). Now, then next thing you could with paper is annotate it. You could place a check mark on a line item in the custom part order that matched a line item in the invoice. You could review the entire bill and say, wow, this guy has spent $100,000 repairing his boat, let's sell these items at cost to him as a discount. Things like this were often done, and the idea of displaying all this information on a computer screen to make that kind of a decision was prohibitive. So, I have seen, over and over again, the reason is not people for the failure of a paperless office, but rather the limitations of the technology, both software and hardware. And there is another factor you aren't considering: cost. Paper is so much cheaper. A good paper organizational system (including a backup system--the good ol' photo copier) is very inexpensive compared to networks, computers, software, etc. Paper doesn't have bugs, it doesn't lose information when the power goes out, it's easily backed up, it's auditable, it's signable, it's securable, etc. With paper, the infrastructure to support it is minimal. With information technology, the infrastructure support is vast. Beginning with your
I'd second everything you said. I'd also add that you need both for different reasons and those reasons change from field to field. Excellent points.
Some assembly required. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
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First off, welcome to CP, Joanne!
JCassick wrote:
because I am trying to prove that people, not information technology is the reason why paperless has not succeeded.
While I agree with much of what you are saying, I disagree with the above statement as an absolute. Let's take a look at paper as technology. I think the salient aspects of paper are in its information retrieval aspect, portability, annotation, and finally, cross-reference management. In some ways, all of the four points I brought up are entangled. For example, there were times at the boat yard when the last six months of invoices needed to be retrieved and compared to each other. Most technological solutions either don't allow for multiple display of the same document type, or, the screen space is so limited it is not easy to visually compare, side by side, multiple documents. To make matters worse, the computer system would organize the various documents by document type. Invoices, work orders, special part orders, labor, time cards, etc. However, the file cabinet literally stored all of these documents together for a particular customer and billing period. So with the paper, you could get a sense of the whole picture. You could spread it out over several desks (this was often done). Now, then next thing you could with paper is annotate it. You could place a check mark on a line item in the custom part order that matched a line item in the invoice. You could review the entire bill and say, wow, this guy has spent $100,000 repairing his boat, let's sell these items at cost to him as a discount. Things like this were often done, and the idea of displaying all this information on a computer screen to make that kind of a decision was prohibitive. So, I have seen, over and over again, the reason is not people for the failure of a paperless office, but rather the limitations of the technology, both software and hardware. And there is another factor you aren't considering: cost. Paper is so much cheaper. A good paper organizational system (including a backup system--the good ol' photo copier) is very inexpensive compared to networks, computers, software, etc. Paper doesn't have bugs, it doesn't lose information when the power goes out, it's easily backed up, it's auditable, it's signable, it's securable, etc. With paper, the infrastructure to support it is minimal. With information technology, the infrastructure support is vast. Beginning with your
This is why my paper is an argumentative paper. Although I do agree that computers are not always perfect. Paper tends to have many more problems that people do not address. For instance, I am am accountant. If my computer system does not show a discount on an invoice. Then there was a problem with the billing process. My system does show these things. The back end of my payroll, the process of calculating, the reporting, and even the W-2's paperwork has been greatly reduced because of technology. No longer do I have to hunt in a secured file cabinet, hoping a secretary filed my paperwork correctly. Because a reprint would be costly to my company. I now have, one secured drawer in a file cabinet, that contains Dvds with what used to be boxes of paper in them. I think there are many issues in the business world, where paper is a huge waste. To quote my source. Abigail J Sellen & Richard H R Harper in the book "the myth of the paperless office" "Businesses spend about $1 billion dollars in designing and printing forms. However they spend $25-35 billion a year filing, storing, and retrieving those paper forms." I have see it for myself. People wasting countless time trying to find information in a filing cabinet. And I don't just mean the old paperwork. They spend time going through records in say accounts payable. To find what? Information on how many pieces of paper we bought and at what price. Mis-filing is a big issue that also has to be addressed. Me personally, I just bring up the information in the accounting program. Bam! It is there in all it's glory. The detail, which was downloaded from the vendor. Item numbers, part numbers, and even price per item. I do see your point, about the poor guy at the dock, not getting an e-mail. But if he owns a boat with a waste system, it is not a little paddle boat, and he probably has on board e-mail. Does he have a post office box. He must of earned the money some how to get that boat. I would (snail) mail it to him. Paper will not dissapear. I just want it to decrease. I never said that paperless was perfect. I just think that there are a lot of people out there that are not willing to share information. They hoard it. They also WASTE it. Lots of it. I have a supervisor, that prints out every e-mail before he sends it, to spell check it. Sometimes there are several revisions. Is that a good use of resources. Then it has to be shred. I have another co-worker who prints everything. And I do mean everything, and
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This is why my paper is an argumentative paper. Although I do agree that computers are not always perfect. Paper tends to have many more problems that people do not address. For instance, I am am accountant. If my computer system does not show a discount on an invoice. Then there was a problem with the billing process. My system does show these things. The back end of my payroll, the process of calculating, the reporting, and even the W-2's paperwork has been greatly reduced because of technology. No longer do I have to hunt in a secured file cabinet, hoping a secretary filed my paperwork correctly. Because a reprint would be costly to my company. I now have, one secured drawer in a file cabinet, that contains Dvds with what used to be boxes of paper in them. I think there are many issues in the business world, where paper is a huge waste. To quote my source. Abigail J Sellen & Richard H R Harper in the book "the myth of the paperless office" "Businesses spend about $1 billion dollars in designing and printing forms. However they spend $25-35 billion a year filing, storing, and retrieving those paper forms." I have see it for myself. People wasting countless time trying to find information in a filing cabinet. And I don't just mean the old paperwork. They spend time going through records in say accounts payable. To find what? Information on how many pieces of paper we bought and at what price. Mis-filing is a big issue that also has to be addressed. Me personally, I just bring up the information in the accounting program. Bam! It is there in all it's glory. The detail, which was downloaded from the vendor. Item numbers, part numbers, and even price per item. I do see your point, about the poor guy at the dock, not getting an e-mail. But if he owns a boat with a waste system, it is not a little paddle boat, and he probably has on board e-mail. Does he have a post office box. He must of earned the money some how to get that boat. I would (snail) mail it to him. Paper will not dissapear. I just want it to decrease. I never said that paperless was perfect. I just think that there are a lot of people out there that are not willing to share information. They hoard it. They also WASTE it. Lots of it. I have a supervisor, that prints out every e-mail before he sends it, to spell check it. Sometimes there are several revisions. Is that a good use of resources. Then it has to be shred. I have another co-worker who prints everything. And I do mean everything, and
JCassick wrote:
(BTW - Five monitors, don't let it out, the husband will want more, too.)
I heard that :) :jig:
George Carlin wrote: "Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things." Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: If the physicists find a universal theory describing the laws of universe, I'm sure the asshole constant will be an integral part of that theory.
My Blog[^]
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First off, welcome to CP, Joanne!
JCassick wrote:
because I am trying to prove that people, not information technology is the reason why paperless has not succeeded.
While I agree with much of what you are saying, I disagree with the above statement as an absolute. Let's take a look at paper as technology. I think the salient aspects of paper are in its information retrieval aspect, portability, annotation, and finally, cross-reference management. In some ways, all of the four points I brought up are entangled. For example, there were times at the boat yard when the last six months of invoices needed to be retrieved and compared to each other. Most technological solutions either don't allow for multiple display of the same document type, or, the screen space is so limited it is not easy to visually compare, side by side, multiple documents. To make matters worse, the computer system would organize the various documents by document type. Invoices, work orders, special part orders, labor, time cards, etc. However, the file cabinet literally stored all of these documents together for a particular customer and billing period. So with the paper, you could get a sense of the whole picture. You could spread it out over several desks (this was often done). Now, then next thing you could with paper is annotate it. You could place a check mark on a line item in the custom part order that matched a line item in the invoice. You could review the entire bill and say, wow, this guy has spent $100,000 repairing his boat, let's sell these items at cost to him as a discount. Things like this were often done, and the idea of displaying all this information on a computer screen to make that kind of a decision was prohibitive. So, I have seen, over and over again, the reason is not people for the failure of a paperless office, but rather the limitations of the technology, both software and hardware. And there is another factor you aren't considering: cost. Paper is so much cheaper. A good paper organizational system (including a backup system--the good ol' photo copier) is very inexpensive compared to networks, computers, software, etc. Paper doesn't have bugs, it doesn't lose information when the power goes out, it's easily backed up, it's auditable, it's signable, it's securable, etc. With paper, the infrastructure to support it is minimal. With information technology, the infrastructure support is vast. Beginning with your
Marc Clifton wrote:
Paper allows people to combine and organize disparate documents in ways no technology can.
I think that the new (upcoming) advances like WinFX will go a long way to changing this. Allowing soft copy documents to be filed and cross-referenced several different ways is going to really move the paperless idea forward.
George Carlin wrote: "Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things." Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: If the physicists find a universal theory describing the laws of universe, I'm sure the asshole constant will be an integral part of that theory.
My Blog[^]
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JCassick wrote:
people working in these organizations are doing everything in their power to resist the change
I disagree with this, simply because it makes the assumption that people care. They don't. We, as people who work in an office, care only about accessing, processing, sending and storing information in as easy a manner as possible. Everyone's made the comment about paper being easier to read. I'm not sure I agree with that. - It's easier to hold a piece of paper and shuffle it around because CRTs are heavy and resist shuffling. - It's easier to compare two pieces of paper than two documents on the screen because screen size and resolution isn't equivalent to my 5' x 3' desk. (mmm...imagine a 3' x 5' 300dpi screen as a desk...Homer drool...). - It's faster to open a book and read it than boot up a PC, find the document, load it, then start reading. Much, much faster to pick out a piece of paper from a binder. As others have said. I don't think the problem is one of old-school types not willing to let go their tree pulp. I think it's simply a problem of screen real-estate, user interface and convenience. You cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
Chris Maunder wrote:
I disagree with this, simply because it makes the assumption that people care. They don't.
While the initial comment may have been a bit of a generalization we all have our own personal experiences to draw on. I have seen this happen in several work places. People see the advancement of technology coming towards them and take an all to human reaction to try to protect their power. I have heard comments on more than one occasion where people have stated they will fight the adoption of new technology coming to their areas because they felt threatened by it. Not EVERYONE is fighting it but I personally have seen it happen enough to where I feel comfortable making the comment. I also think that things are going to change as people in existing positions move on (retire) and people that have literally grown up with technology on their desks and in their pockets move up and into business. Advancement of paperless technology, while the technology itself is not completely to blame, IS (IMHO) going to depend greatly on the acceptance of the people. Perhaps part of that acceptance is going to tie in with the ability of the prevailing technology to do what the people want it to do, but some of it is also going to have to be the peoples ability to want to accept it in the first place.
George Carlin wrote: "Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things." Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: If the physicists find a universal theory describing the laws of universe, I'm sure the asshole constant will be an integral part of that theory.
My Blog[^]
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I agree with what Marc Clifton has said and I totally disagree with the premise of "...Proving that people, not information technology is the reason why paperless has not succeeded." Paper has far greater utility than the technology that is trying to replace it. The ubiquitousness (SP?) of paper and ease of transmission of paper (in the local sense as in handing a piece of paper to someone) far outweighs the technology substitutions available. Even the internet with all of its advances proves that paper is sometimes just easier. I have often needed to view a document with a diagram and had to scroll the page to see it all which is difficult to do and makes the content difficult to fully grasp. Also, the cost of paper makes it of much greater utility since I can tear a piece of paper out of a notebook and tape it to a server rack for later reference. Also, while the cost of extranous paper (i.e. printing a document of 20 pages multiple times due to a simple change) is easy to see, the cost of the extra power needed to run computer systems, cost of recycling, environmental impact of disposing of older computer equipment, are much harder to see and at the very least seem to be ignored by the "paperless office" pushers. Another key people aspect of paper is that it is simply easier to read than modern computer screens, both CRT and LCD. Yet another people aspect is the need for "multi-tasking" of documents. I often have several printed documents on my desk (design documents, coding guidelines, spec sheets, reports) that I need to refer to while working with consultants or staff while using my computer. As of today, there is no technology that makes it easy to do this, or cost permissive. Tablet PCs seem to be a step in the right direction, but the cost of a tablet PC is simply prohibitve to utility. I suppose that at some point in the future, intelligent paper will be invented that is cheap enought to replace current paper products. It will be able to be printed on, written on, torn in pieces, etc. This intelligent paper will be re-usable, thin, foldable and look much like paper does today. It will be suffeciently cheap that handing a piece of it to someone will not involve a financial transaction. I have a hard time seeing what benefits intelligent paper will be able to deliver at such a price though.
Matt Gullett wrote:
I suppose that at some point in the future, intelligent paper will be invented that is cheap enough to replace current paper products.
But I don't think this is really doing anything to move towards a paperless ideal. Lets get a good grasp on the idea as to what 'paperless' really means. I don't WANT paper, smart or other wise. Personally the mear thought of paper brings on hives. Lets take a look at what paper gets us. - It has made possible the ability to do a few minutes of dumpster diving and end up being able to steal a persons identity. - It has helped bring about mountains of garbage that need to be dealt with every year, and the number as far as I can find so far, is not dropping. - Fills our houses with useless copies of records and documents that can get lost or stolen. - Makes business processes move slower because it relies on the ability to physically move it from one location to another. - Slows communication, again because it has to be physically moved from point a to point b. - Makes it more difficult to communicate because it is not in a format that is easily translatable between languages. I am sure I could come up with many more ways if I kept at it here. The entire idea is that paperless is exactly what it means. Less paper. Not just a different type. You want me to sign a contract then send me an electronic copy and I will digitally sign it and send it back. You want me to read something and comment on it? Send me a link and I will go there and do what I need to do. While I don't ever think we will get to a completely paperless society I would like to see it get to the point where people look at paper the way teenagers of today look at vinyl records.
George Carlin wrote: "Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things." Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: If the physicists find a universal theory describing the laws of universe, I'm sure the asshole constant will be an integral part of that theory.
My Blog[^]