No paper

Oh joy, to have a notice like this on your door so that you didn’t have to deal with all those pieces of paper you never know what to do with. Unfortunately, my office is no more paperless than anyone else’s. The idea of a paperless office—to minimise paper by keeping information in digital form instead—was first touted as long ago as 1975, when it was predicted that the office of the future would see paper become redundant for routine uses such as record-keeping and bookkeeping. But everyone who has ever worked in an office knows how much paper is used! Improvement in printers and increased electronic communication (much of which is printed out) actually resulted in the worldwide use of office paper more than doubling between 1980 and 2000. I suspect there is plenty of paper in the room behind this door, and that they just don’t want to take delivery of the local rag.