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While paper used to be the near-perfect technology for storing and distributing non-ephemeral information nowadays this has been turned on its head to the exten

While paper used to be the near-perfect technology for storing and distributing non-ephemeral information nowadays this has been turned on its head to the extent that using paper for these purposes has become downright detrimental: Information stored on paper in some filing cabinet in some office for all practical purposes simply doesn't exist. It can't be easily searched, retrieved or accessed by someone who's not in the same room and doesn't exactly know what he's looking for. In other words: That information is lost. Old habits unfortunately die hard, which is why people still seem to be thinking that storing non-ephemeral information or knowledge on paper is a good idea.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> It can't be easily searched, retrieved or accessed by someone who's not in the same room and doesn't exactly know what he's looking for To a lot of people in a lot of scenarios, that is a feature. Modern cryptography has yet to match the ease of use, comfort and security of a single piece of paper locked away somewhere only you would think to look.
- deleted 9y ago
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vinceguidry 9y ago
Information locked away on some local user's desktop also doesn't exist. If information isn't stored on a dedicated application-specific storage system staffed with people skilled in it's use and repair, then it's the exact same thing. We can't just take information and dump it on a block storage device. It needs proper archival. This is the same with paper, only if you lose the key to your file cabinet or the drawers stop sliding so easily, you can still get at the information. If your RAID backplane dies and you don't know how to fix it, you're in for a bad day. There is a skillset you can learn to work with paper more efficiently. But most people can muddle through without those skills. Not so with digital.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  I work in this very field. My company sells enterprise content management (ECM) software that helps organizations go paperless. In my experience, it's not just about archival, search and retrieval. The system also needs to have robust automation capabilities, and be able to do things like automatically rename the files in a consistent way based on storage location, file content (text, voice, etc.), and identify when people store things in the incorrect location and correct those mistakes or at least flag the files for manual correction. The other thing to realize is that information doesn't get generated in a vacuum. It's generated via various business processes. So if you can automate those using software, and the automation routines are tied to the content management system such that things are filed in the correct location based on business process data (e.g. which department initiated the process, who approved what, etc.) then you're basically 80% of the way to paperlessness.
- jamesjyu 9y ago
  I was recently researching some of things archivists have to do, and the general consensus is that their skills are needed even more in the digital age, not less, because it introduces a whole host of new problems: files that fork, forgeries, losing the ability to read old file formats, etc. There was also a project by MoMA (I can't find the original article), where they had to get a whole team together to create formats that will ensure survival in the future by doing things like including the instructions to view the format in a readable way.
  - reaperducer 9y ago
    Reminds me of a quote from the early days of the internet. It went something like "The internet is like a library with every book in the world. But all the books are on the floor."
- macspoofing 9y ago
  >Information locked away on some local user's desktop also doesn't exist. If information isn't stored on a dedicated application-specific storage system staffed with people skilled in it's use and repair, then it's the exact same thing Office365, GSuite. Small and medium businesses have options.
Spooky23 9y ago
That’s not true at all. You use one of any number of filing systems. I worked on a pretty huge paper to electronic record conversion project... millions of pages. We made it much easier to access, although about 25x more expensive, but 95% of searches align with the indexing systems in place for the paper process. Even in my life, I use a traditional 43 folders system for some things. Very accessible.
- BjoernKW 9y ago
  Any system probably is better than no system in this case. Still, there's the fundamental problem with paper-based system that when you design an indexing system you have to correctly anticipate how people will use the system for the foreseeable future (i.e. until the next reorganization). It's much easier to find scientific books and papers online than by using IR systems in university libraries designed for exactly that purpose by librarians, whose entire profession is built on organising information. The reason for this isn't that those librarians don't know how to do their job. It's that information stored on paper alone (i.e. without a digital representation) can't be easily searched for.
someonewhocar3s 9y ago
These old habits also concern ways of indexing and duplicating information, such that it is always available nearby when needed. Of course, that meant sometimes a business process took as long as a day per step of processing, and the shipping time between locations the information had to be. Processes sensitive to time have pretty much all been replaced by now. Processes that depend more upon cheap and consistent presentation, or reliability, have been kept on paper for the simple reason that it's better. Processes prone to exceptional circumstance, or in need of rapid redesign, or quick notes, may find that paper suits their needs better due to the overhead of developing appropriate software. I'm not sure if this is Human Error, or an actual machine deficiency.
gkya 9y ago
> Information stored on paper in some filing cabinet in some office for all practical purposes simply doesn't exist. It can't be easily searched, retrieved or accessed by someone who's not in the same room and doesn't exactly know what he's looking for. In other words: That information is lost. You can't find anything if you don't know what you're looking for, be it through a search box or a pile of drawers filled with paper. A search engine is just a sophisticated index. Information, in any form, is only retrievable once a certain hierarchy is imposed upon it (be it scarce or not) and some sort of index is there (be it in your mind---the invoice is in New Folder (3)---or actually written down somewhere, or somehow generated and operated by a search tool). Yes you certainly can't grep paper (you can try though, there's OCR if one wants to go to those lengths, and that certainly can be useful for lots of tasks, even in the personal scale), but you can't grep your text files if you don't have a search term at hand.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> It can't be easily searched, retrieved or accessed by someone who's not in the same room and doesn't exactly know what he's looking for To a lot of people in a lot of scenarios, that is a feature. Modern cryptography has yet to match the ease of use, comfort and security of a single piece of paper locked away somewhere only you would think to look.

deleted 9y ago
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vinceguidry 9y ago

Information locked away on some local user's desktop also doesn't exist. If information isn't stored on a dedicated application-specific storage system staffed with people skilled in it's use and repair, then it's the exact same thing. We can't just take information and dump it on a block storage device. It needs proper archival. This is the same with paper, only if you lose the key to your file cabinet or the drawers stop sliding so easily, you can still get at the information. If your RAID backplane dies and you don't know how to fix it, you're in for a bad day. There is a skillset you can learn to work with paper more efficiently. But most people can muddle through without those skills. Not so with digital.

enraged_camel 9y ago
I work in this very field. My company sells enterprise content management (ECM) software that helps organizations go paperless. In my experience, it's not just about archival, search and retrieval. The system also needs to have robust automation capabilities, and be able to do things like automatically rename the files in a consistent way based on storage location, file content (text, voice, etc.), and identify when people store things in the incorrect location and correct those mistakes or at least flag the files for manual correction. The other thing to realize is that information doesn't get generated in a vacuum. It's generated via various business processes. So if you can automate those using software, and the automation routines are tied to the content management system such that things are filed in the correct location based on business process data (e.g. which department initiated the process, who approved what, etc.) then you're basically 80% of the way to paperlessness.
jamesjyu 9y ago
I was recently researching some of things archivists have to do, and the general consensus is that their skills are needed even more in the digital age, not less, because it introduces a whole host of new problems: files that fork, forgeries, losing the ability to read old file formats, etc. There was also a project by MoMA (I can't find the original article), where they had to get a whole team together to create formats that will ensure survival in the future by doing things like including the instructions to view the format in a readable way.
- reaperducer 9y ago
  Reminds me of a quote from the early days of the internet. It went something like "The internet is like a library with every book in the world. But all the books are on the floor."
macspoofing 9y ago
>Information locked away on some local user's desktop also doesn't exist. If information isn't stored on a dedicated application-specific storage system staffed with people skilled in it's use and repair, then it's the exact same thing Office365, GSuite. Small and medium businesses have options.

Spooky23 9y ago

That’s not true at all. You use one of any number of filing systems. I worked on a pretty huge paper to electronic record conversion project... millions of pages. We made it much easier to access, although about 25x more expensive, but 95% of searches align with the indexing systems in place for the paper process. Even in my life, I use a traditional 43 folders system for some things. Very accessible.

BjoernKW 9y ago
Any system probably is better than no system in this case. Still, there's the fundamental problem with paper-based system that when you design an indexing system you have to correctly anticipate how people will use the system for the foreseeable future (i.e. until the next reorganization). It's much easier to find scientific books and papers online than by using IR systems in university libraries designed for exactly that purpose by librarians, whose entire profession is built on organising information. The reason for this isn't that those librarians don't know how to do their job. It's that information stored on paper alone (i.e. without a digital representation) can't be easily searched for.

someonewhocar3s 9y ago

These old habits also concern ways of indexing and duplicating information, such that it is always available nearby when needed. Of course, that meant sometimes a business process took as long as a day per step of processing, and the shipping time between locations the information had to be. Processes sensitive to time have pretty much all been replaced by now. Processes that depend more upon cheap and consistent presentation, or reliability, have been kept on paper for the simple reason that it's better. Processes prone to exceptional circumstance, or in need of rapid redesign, or quick notes, may find that paper suits their needs better due to the overhead of developing appropriate software. I'm not sure if this is Human Error, or an actual machine deficiency.

gkya 9y ago

> Information stored on paper in some filing cabinet in some office for all practical purposes simply doesn't exist. It can't be easily searched, retrieved or accessed by someone who's not in the same room and doesn't exactly know what he's looking for. In other words: That information is lost. You can't find anything if you don't know what you're looking for, be it through a search box or a pile of drawers filled with paper. A search engine is just a sophisticated index. Information, in any form, is only retrievable once a certain hierarchy is imposed upon it (be it scarce or not) and some sort of index is there (be it in your mind---the invoice is in New Folder (3)---or actually written down somewhere, or somehow generated and operated by a search tool). Yes you certainly can't grep paper (you can try though, there's OCR if one wants to go to those lengths, and that certainly can be useful for lots of tasks, even in the personal scale), but you can't grep your text files if you don't have a search term at hand.