3 ms·

There are a lot less paper than there used to be or could be. But paper is still cheap and of course there are legal reasons for using paper for legal documents

There are a lot less paper than there used to be or could be. But paper is still cheap and of course there are legal reasons for using paper for legal documents/etc. But ask the people in the printing presses, wood mills, etc how "paper" is doing. Just because it isn't gone doesn't mean that there are headwinds for paper. People used to say the same thing about pay phones. Cellular phones will never replace pay phones/etc. Look how quickly they disappeared. But I agree, paper is going to be around for a while, but its usage is in decline.

halomru 9y ago
In some applications paper will hold out for quite some time. Only recently screens with a resolution comparable to paper became practical, and it will take until the 2020s until they are widely deployed outside smartphones. And that screen technology still has problems with reading speed as compared to paper. And in terms of viewing multiple documents next to each other it might take one or two more decades for screens to catch up to paper in everyday use. Then again in a lot of office applications that is irrelevant, meaning paper is of little use to them.
- freeone3000 9y ago
  "widely deployed outside of smartphones" seems an odd qualification. "widely deployed outside of" the most common consumer electronic device in existence, which most people carry on them at all times?
  - halomru 9y ago
    I meant that more in terms of "widely deployed in sizes exceeding the most common paper size (A4/legal)". At the size of a smartphone you have to exceed the resolution of paper by a considerable margin to show the same amount of detail.