Paper v electronic – the future of the written word

OPINION: One of the predictions that were made 15 or 20 years ago is that electronic documents would destroy the market for documents written on paper.  The paperless office was predicted to be only a few years away and devices like the Kindle with electronic books would replace the traditional written book.

All of this sounded logical but it has not turned out that way.  Traditional bookstores have actually had a resurgence in recent years and there are at least as many paper books evident looking around as electronic books.

I think what has happened is that the predictions have underestimated the positive aspects of a real book compared with an electronic device, including the ability to jump from point to point, seeing visually how far though you are and just the feel of something solid in your hands.  Certainly, I would not be seen within a country mile of an electronic book because they seem so impersonal.  Give me a real book every time.

There has been a similar development with the paperless office.   There are many offices that are now genuinely paperless although I suspect it has been initially by fiat rather than the choice of the employees.  I know I have worked in offices in recent times (less than2 years) where documents are basically created electronically but are then promptly copied and stored in paper form for personal reference.  This actually creates a huge problem as the volume of paperwork can grow beyond all reasonable bounds in no time.  Storage becomes a real issue.

However, there is no doubt that electronic sources dominate the provisions of news and business information, because of ease of access and the fact that it is so much easier to keep the information up to date.  For that reason, most of the major city newspapers are struggling or surviving by combining – an example is the Dominion Post in Wellington.  But apparently, local papers are doing quite well.  And electronic means, based on the internet, now monopolise the transmission of information to “audiences” of all sizes and kinds.

So, there is a kind of a dichotomy in people’s behaviour in this area.

One of the ironies of all of this is security.  Security had long been a big issue in the digital information age – in part because it is paradoxically very difficult to completely destroy digital information, and in part, because if you can work on how to get access then huge volumes of information become accessible.  Techniques like encryption have been used to improve security but there are too many clever operators out there now who can solve almost any access problem.

No such problems exist with a paper record particularly if it is manually created.  It is incorruptible because there is only one copy and can be destroyed irrecoverably in several ways in seconds.

It could be that some of this are intergenerational in character, ie my generation has been brought up with paper but my grandchildren are wholly wedded to the digital age.  So, it could be that as the baton passes to the digital generation, paper-based information will disappear into history.

However, my guess is that paper-based records and information will still have their place.  There is an allure to something as solid and tangible as a book that appeals to something in the human psyche, and I think that allure will always be there.

By Bas Walker

This is another of Bas Walker’s posts on GrownUps.  Please look out for his articles, containing his Beachside Ponderings.