Paperless?

Xerox was right — of course — but it’s thirty years later and we’re still not there.

When I first got into personal computing (1980) I had access to two computers — a Sinclair ZX-80 (eventually upgraded to the ZX-81 ROM and an amazing 16kB of RAM) and, at school, an Apple ][+ with a single floppy drive (slot 6) and a thermal printer (slot 2). Having a printer was a privilege, but it was almost always out of paper (which was expensive) and the print quality was dreadful.

The key to avoiding paper is having a bookreader that isn't "one more damn thing". Apple's much-anticipated "touchbook" might converge notebook, bookreader, and printed documents in general.
The key to avoiding paper is having a bookreader that isn't "one more damn thing". Apple's much-anticipated "touchbook" might converge notebook, bookreader, and printed documents in general.

When the $10,000 (in Australia) Apple Laserwriter appeared, ushering in desktop publishing, it offered 300dpi PostScript printing, and suddenly the most important thing about a computer — it seemed — was its ability to put stuff on paper. In fact, having (briefly) given up on Computer Science because of my loathing of mainframes, the Mac and desktop publishing were what dragged me back in.

I’ve owned a lot of printers. My last “big” printer investment was a $400 color laser printer which broke down and is sitting at the top of my stairs waiting for a trip to the trash. (At our local Target, all-in-one printers from Epson and HP are on sale for less than the cost of their replacement ink cartridges.) My wife and I have recently decided the only printers we need are monochrome laser printers, ideally with automatic duplexing (to save paper), and we hardly ever need them. We can print our color photos to Target’s photo store for less than the cost-per-print of using Canon’s cheap dye-subs, and the quality is just as good, or better. And if we need to print something else in color (e.g. if I need to assemble a new paper portfolio) I can print that to photo paper too.

So, yes, you still occasionally need hard copy, especially for interacting with the government (where the laser printer has turned “triplicate” into signing three copies) or the academic world (the current generation of full professors needs to retire before all the journals can go paperless and countless academics can stop having to lug thousands of pounds of journals around every time they move office or house) but not nearly so much as before.

The final death knell for paper may be at hand in the shape of general purpose computing tablets. Sure, there are tablet computers already, but they’re either not really designed to be used as tablets (i.e. they run Windows or something similar) or they’re not really designed to be used as computers (e.g. the Kindle). This means that they suffer from the “one more damn thing” problem I keep harping on.

The most common use of my print dialog these days is producing PDFs. The most likely reason I have for actually printing to paper is if I’ve trying to produce something I need to read that’s quite long, especially if I need to make notes and corrections, or if I need to pass a document to someone else and they require paper. There’s nothing I can do about the latter, especially if the basic idea is that the document needs to be filed and the filing system is intended to survive operating system upgrades and power failures (as important filing systems are wont to do — although most filing systems that consider themselves so important, aren’t). But good (and pervasive) tablet computers will eliminate the first requirement, while the second requirement will be reduced (as various people who demand paper start reading on tablets). And, finally, as requiring paper documents grows less “normal”, more and more organizations will change their practices.

I suggest that not only will Apple’s upcoming tablet be this computer, it will raise the bar for Microsoft (and Ubuntu) leading to a whole new ecosystem of touch-based, keyboardless, readable computers. (And they should all work dandy with battery-powered bluetooth keyboards.)

Well, I can hope.

Note: I can’t help pointing out a subtle reference in the illustration, because it’s quite significant. The New Yorker cover shown on my “Touchbook” mockup was painted by Jorge Colombo on an iPhone using the Brushes app.