This isn't a post about how paper is going away. Futurists, I think, are past all that, especially after 1) it didn't happen after the explosion of the Web, and 2) The Myth of the Paperless Office explained in terrific detail just how paper works as a medium for collaboration, as a physical object for organizing workplace interactions, and as a tool for instantly seeing the state of a job (in air traffic control, for example).
This evening, I ran across Anonymous Lawyer's post on the uses of paper as dramatic props and communication tools in legal practice (paragraph breaks added):
you can't mark up a document on the computer, you can't carry it down the hall and wave it in someone's face and ask them what they were thinking when they left out the comma on page 17.
I never thought about it before, but I can't imagine ever getting to a point where there wasn't all this paper. You just can't walk into an associate's office, slam your laptop on his desk, and scroll down to the place where he made a mistake. You need to have that brief printed out, you need to be able to tear those pages right in front of eyes, to scatter them wildly across the room, to fill the sheet with red lines and crosses and corrections, to crumple those papers up, toss them in the trash can, light them on fire, and watch them burn.
Sure, we could probably afford to destroy a couple dozen laptops a day just to make a point that we demand perfection -- but paper just works so much better for that.
Incidentally, his blog is worth dropping in on whenever you think your job is bad.
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