Is Paperless
Really
By
More?
Rethinking the role of paper in the digital age.
For the past 20 years, the evolution
of the paperless office has been pre-
Ziming
Liu dicted as an inevitable result of
technology advances—the fully
and electronic, high-tech office-of-the-
David G. future is just around the corner,
Stork according to this thinking. But this
prediction doesn’t take lessons of
history into account. Far from ren-
dering old technologies obsolete,
the introduction of new technolo-
gies has often stimulated dynamic
interactions between old and new.
Sometimes, the introduction of new
technologies sparks new interest in
old ones. Gutenberg’s invention of
the printing press should have
sounded the death knell for hand-
written works, for example, yet for
several centuries quite the opposite
occurred:
At the end of the fifteenth century,
even though printing was by then well
established, care for the elegant hand
had not died out, and some of the most
94 November 2000/Vol. 43, No. 11 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM
memorable examples of calligraphy still
lay in the future. While books were
becoming more easily available and
more people were learning to read,
more were also learning to write, often
stylishly and with great distinction,
and the sixteenth century became not
only the age of the printed word but
also the century of the great manuals of
handwriting. [4]
Those who expect new technolo-
gies to immediately change the
world often forget to take into
account the social-material complex of
which technologies are only a part
[10]. New technologies solve prob-
lems, but they also create dilemmas
involving social, cultural, organiza-
tional, and human factors [5, 6].
Today, the paperless office is more
distant than when it was proposed.
Despite the enormous popularity of
computers and personal digital assis-
tants, along with improvements in
screen technology, mobile comput-
 ing technology, and navigational and from Print-Copy-Distribute to Dis-
input tools, paper usage in the U.S. tribute-View-Print, along with the
continues to increase (see Figure 1). shift from centralized to decentral-
Of total paper production, the per- ized printing.
centage of paper used for printing Why is all this extra paper being
and writing increased approximately used for printing? One reason
13% from 1970–1997. In addition: involves, paradoxically, the increased
popularity of computers as research
• About 94% of all business infor- tools. Olsen found that 63% of those
mation is still recorded on paper, interviewed preferred to annotate or
with an estimated 2.4 billion new underline articles as they read them
sheets placed in paper file folders [6]. Electronic note-taking is certainly
each day, according to a 1997 possible, but it requires additional
survey by Wang Laboratory, Inc. skills rather than use of a pencil or
• An average of 600 million office highlighter. Also, even if they don’t
documents are printed out each
day in the U.S., amounting to
nearly three documents for
every man, woman, and
child, according to a
Gartner Group survey.
• Office workers continue
to rely heavily on fax,
despite email usage, with
60% of daily fax users
faxing more in 1996
than in 1995, according
to a Gallup survey of
Fortune 500 and mid-sized
companies [9].
• The sales and library circulation
of paper books continue to grow,
suggesting that people are still
heavily reliant on paper for much need to highlight or annotate, many
of their reading activities. are not comfortable reading long doc-
uments on a screen. One can’t spread
While paper will not become out pages of a large document while
obsolete any time soon, a shift is reading or studying, for example. The
occurring in how it is being used. long-standing practice of maintaining
The percentage of paper used by file folders of printed materials,
printers is increasing, while the per- arranged by topic, remains popular in
centage of paper used in photo- the electronic age [6]. Figure 2
copiers actually decreased. Factors demonstrates the growing consump-
TERRY MIURA

contributing to the increased use of tion of paper for manufacturing file

printers over copiers include the shift folders, another indicator of the
of information distribution patterns increasing use of printed information.

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM November 2000/Vol. 43, No. 11 95

 Unless technological improvements make
annotating digital documents as easy as
annotating paper documents, paper consumption
is not likely to decrease.

Although many periodical subscribers now access Mathematics, and The American Journal of Sociology),
their favorite journals electronically, because of the the average length of document use (average life of
paucity of electronic back issues, they still need to use citation) is very stable over the past 95 years
the traditional library to make photocopies of older (1900–1995).
issues. While our research indicates new documents The simple tangibility of the printed document
are used more frequently than old ones1, many need to is another reason for its continued popularity,
despite the existence of electronic equivalents. To
Figure 1. U.S. consumption of paper and hold a diploma, certificate, or contract in hand pro-
paperboard per capita, 1919–1999 (in pounds) vides confirmation of its credibility. The saying
800
“put it on paper” conveys the importance of this
tangible document medium. An important docu-
700
ment sent by email, such as a job offer letter, is usu-
600
ally accompanied by a printed document sent via
500 the post office. Records considered as evidence,
400 such as legal documents, are less likely to be trans-
300 ferred and preserved in digital form, while others,
200
such as most email messages and airline schedules,
100
tend to stay digital because of their ephemeral
nature.
0
1919 1929 1939 1949 1959 1969 1979 1989 1999 Paper use is deeply rooted in our culture and has
Source of data: [2] had a profound impact on the civilization of our soci-
ety. As Strassmann noted, paper-based documents
Figure 2. U.S. consumption of paper for will survive as long as institutions deeply rooted in
file folder per capita, 1987–1997 (in pounds) traditions of an agricultural society continue to
operate [7].
2.5

Managing Paper
2 The explosive consumption of paper in the office
has highlighted the need, if not for a paperless
1.5 office, then at least for a “less-paper” office. Profes-
sionals in today’s business world spend about 60
1 percent of their time handling the vast quantity of
paper flowing into their office daily [8]. The
0.5 process is highly inefficient, suggest these survey
findings [1]:
0
1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997
Source of data: [2] • Large organizations lose one document every 12
seconds;
access more than just the current issue. According to • 3% of all documents are incorrectly filed;
our citation analysis of three journals (Journal of the • 7.5% of documents are lost forever;
American Chemical Society, The American Journal of • Disorganization in the workplace may cost
executives up to six weeks of time per year;
1
• The average executive spends three hours per
According to our survey conducted at the Library Main Stack at the University of
California at Berkeley in November 1997, approximately 40% of all documents week hunting for mislabeled, misfiled or lost
copied are less than five years old (1992-1997). documents.

96 November 2000/Vol. 43, No. 11 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

With paper documents flowing at a faster pace than
ever, the need for more efficient document manage-
ment systems becomes increasingly urgent. Unless
technological improvements make annotating digital
documents as easy as annotating paper documents,
as well as make it possible for people to annotate
every document they view, the consumption of
paper by printing is not likely to decrease. The fact
that people usually spread out multiple documents
while writing presents another interesting challenge.

Conclusion
New technologies are commonly misperceived as
total replacements for old ones, when in fact the
introduction of a new technology can stimulate a
synergy between old and new. Electronic media and
printed media complement, and in some ways even
reinforce each other. Today, paper remains the most
popular document medium because of its credibility,
tangibility, ease of use, portability, and compatibility
with all imaging devices, such as facsimile
units, copiers, printers, and scanners. We predict a
long-term coexistence of paper and electronic
documents. c

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Ziming Liu (zliu@wahoo.sjsu.edu) is an assistant professor at the

School of Library and Information Science, San Jose State University,
San Jose, CA.
David G. Stork (stork@rsv.ricoh.com) is chief scientist at Ricoh
California Research Center, Menlo Park, CA.

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