Editorial: Paper Forever, But Less of It
Perhaps you are reading this editorial in the print version of the magazine, or perhaps you are reading an electronic version on a computer, tablet, or smart phone. As yet another alternative, perhaps you’ve accessed the column electronically and have printed out the copy you are now reading on paper.
Those in the publishing business know there are increasingly many ways to present content: on paper; online in HTML, PDF, or standard digital-magazine or eBook formats; or as an app tailored to the many smart mobile devices out there—not to mention many multimedia possibilities.
With all these options, the question on everyone’s mind becomes, what is the role of paper going forward?
In an effort to help answer that question, Poll Position, which describes itself as a nonpartisan news, polling, and social media company, conducted a scientific telephone survey of 1,142 registered voters in the United States on Dec. 6, 2011, in which the company asked whether respondents believed the country would ever become a paperless society. The results, with a margin of error of ±3%, show that 56% of Americans said they don’t think the United States would ever be a paperless society while 20% said yes, one day we’ll all go paperless. Another 24% of Americans were undecided or had no opinion on the question.
That’s not too surprising—or if it is, it’s that the percentage of people expecting an indefinite future for the medium isn’t higher. Paper has had a long, successful run, and although we might use less of it in the future, the idea that we could go completely paperless seems far-fetched.
Paper remains cheaper and more portable than a PC or even tablet display, and I often write an article on my laptop while referring to a printout of a PowerPoint presentation and handwritten notes. Granted, it’s likely that at some point I’ll use a mobile device on the desk next to my laptop to display that PowerPoint presentation—using the mobile device rather than a printout to augment the computer display.
From an engineering perspective, such usage of mobile devices as an auxiliary screen is called “development augmentation,” as P.J. Tanzillo, senior group manager for product marketing at National Instruments, put it when I interviewed him while writing my article “Mobile Apps Support Communications Test, Data Acquisition,” for our January issue. (Development augmentation, he said, is one of four use cases for mobile devices in engineering, the others being data acquisition, remote monitoring and control, and reference.)
What’s also not surprising about the poll results is that Republicans (at 58%) more than Democrats (at 51%) see a bright future for paper—conservatives expect the tried-and-true approaches to last. Expectations for the ongoing use of paper didn’t seem to differ by gender, with 56% of men and women both saying we never could be a paperless society. As for proponents of the converse, more men than women were confident of such a paperless future, with 25% of men and only 16% of women expecting such an outcome. (More than 28% of women but only 18% of men expressed no opinion.)
What is surprising is the responses by age. The 18 to 29 age group expressed the strongest opinion: 63% said the United States would never be a paperless society, and 23% said we could be a paperless society. For the over-65 group, only 42% were confident the nation would never become paperless. The older group was more unsure, however, with 45.7% vs. only 14.3% of the younger group expressing no opinion.
Being young at heart, I’m with the 18 to 29 group and am confident we will never go paperless although we will use less of it as alternatives come into play.
Rick Nelson
Executive Editor
[email protected]