One of the promises of the world of the 21st century, aside from the silver jumpsuits, jetpacks and meals-in-a-pill, was the notion of the paperless office. In fact, it’s been something of a joke amongst workplaces over the past decade or so — in this computerised world, the one thing that’s held true is the ever-increasing amount of paper we generate, move about and file away.
Finally, I’m starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. A couple of significant technological events have taken place in my life, and I am now not only aiming for a paperless office — I’m also aiming for a paperless home. And I think I might be only a matter of months away from it.
For years, we’ve been oppressed by piles of paper that needed to be dealt with, sorted and filed. Usually, those things didn’t really get done. When something became pressing, we would hunt through one of our boxes of to-be-sorted papers to find the one A4 sheet with the information on it that we needed. “What does Jake have to take with him to Wales tomorrow?” was yesterday’s cause for a search.
But at work, our new photocopiers can scan to PDF. It’s quick, it’s full colour (if required), it’s a good resolution (300×300dpi) and it means that every piece of paper can be fairly promptly converted to a digital file that can be stored away without taking up any space at all — and searching becomes effortless.
Best thing about it is that you don’t feel guilty about doing so much copying… because you’re not using anything up in the process.
I’ve completely emptied a filing cabinet drawer at work already, and I’m working my way through all our old bank statements and bills before they get tossed in the shredder.
Book chapters and journal articles I use are getting the same treatment. Library to photocopier, and back to library. Now that the technology’s come this far, it might be just about time to get a scanner and a shredder for home too. Handouts for students will be emailed, or put online for download.
Some people I’ve spoken to about this expressed concern about the safety of digital copies of documents. I’m not worried. I’m far more likely to lose a piece of paper than a digital file, I do data backups fairly regularly – and, what’s more, I’m taking extra care by doing offsite backups using Gmail Drive.
The time-consuming bit comes from the fact that the photocopying/scanning machine names the document with its own numerical system, so I’m resigned to going through the files one by one and renaming them. This is a far more onerous process at the initial stages, but when this becomes a regular update rather than an everything-from-scratch affair, this will be far less bothersome.
I’m still looking for a system whereby I could tag the documents with an array of keywords (in a Web 2.0 style) for easy findability — but folders and self-explanatory naming conventions will do the trick for the moment.
Of course, originals of things like passports, birth and marriage certificates and the like will be kept in their physical form. But we’ll take scans of them as well, just for safety’s sake.
In fact, my paper consumption is headed toward zero. I don’t read the litternet any more, and my calendar/diary is entirely online now. Notes are passed via text message and apart from the odd shopping list and the notebook I always have with me, I don’t have much to do with paper anymore.
That said, there’s a great big box of the stuff waiting to be taken into work with me to be scanned and renamed. There’s still a way to go — but I’m optimistic.
If only the postie wouldn’t keep sticking so much of it through our front door every day.
