Robust Paper Production Set to Come Back to the Future?

Almost two-thirds of those surveyed said they believe paper newspapers, paper money, and letters sent via paper mail would cease to exist by 2050, Pew reported. But Americans also said the federal government's efforts to go paperless hurt older Americans, people without internet access, and the poor, according to a 2013 poll from Americans for Paper Options, an industry advocacy group. Is a future without paper wise, or even possible?

 

"The vision of paperless healthcare records has really been driven by the push for improved quality and safety in health care. It hasn't been driven as much by efficiency and environmental purposes." This was the explanation Julia Adler-Milstein at the University of Michigan gave to The Week in an interview published this summer. The Week was curious as to why paper use hasn’t been reduced in the healthcare industry compared to other industries where reduction, or even elimination of paper, is becoming progressively more common.

She added that, in some cases, electronic records have actually led to more paper use. Regulations in some states require extensive record keeping, which means every electronic record has to have a paper duplicate. And many of the digital record systems don't communicate well with each other, so when patients change doctors or visit a new hospital, their records are often printed out and mailed or faxed.

But one major unintended side effect of the paperless push in healthcare, is that with digital storage virtually unlimited, doctors can document much more information about a patient than they could in the past according to Adler-Milstein. So when it comes time to print that information, records have bulged in size.

In a Metropolitan Magazine article published this past month, Contributor Susan Szenazy found herself disillusioned by paper recycling, or as she called it, "trashing" hard copy materials that she thinks should have been at least reviewed for archiving the magazines’s history.  But The Metropolitan has built a new headquarters that was deliberately designed to reduce the use and storage of paper. She noted that the new building had its benefits, such as sunlit offices with a great view of midtown Manhattan. However, many employees, including Szenazy, found themselves confused in a building designed for digital use while many workers at the publication require paper to compose and record quick notes and to gather research when working on a project.  

"We are trying to figure out how the paradigm of the digital office, with its emphasis on minimal physical artifacts, will work for us," she said.

She also recalled writing an obituary where she could not find what she felt would be sufficient information on a personal history throughout a lifetime. Szenazy was working with a brief, barebones, obit she found online that contained little more information than the time of her birth, death, and survivors. Later she heard that extensive archives from her old profession were destroyed. The thousands of photographs she took of new buildings, interiors, people, and events—a record of the state of interior design as it evolved through the years, and the people who made that evolution possible; her clippings of news stories through decades of avid reading—all were gone forever. It was a collection of notes for her never-written book about the story of the profession she loved, details that should have been in the story of her life. But, unfortunately, it became more trash.

 

Will our society continue to allow the destruction of physical records simply because they don't fit on a flash drive? It seems like a decision that comes with more severe negative consequences that outweigh the possible benefits of saving storage space. However, it might not be noticed until some time in the future, when our history is not written but instead put in a binary format and our photographs pixelated in the same digital format that itself will age to the point of incompatibility with new machines. Instead of simply archiving the past, constant copying from older digital mediums to newer ones could become an inconvenient yet necessary need in our society.

Even though we've gone electronic, we haven't gone paperless," she remarked. "It's a funny paradox... In our mad dash into the digital world, what happens to our nondigital history?"

All this trash made her wonder what happens to nondigital history. Billions are invested every day in apps, gadgets, and services that will eventually become obsolete as "smart money" finds new ventures. The constant evolution of digital devices creates incompatibility issues unlike with paper. She was doubtful her business and others will be wise to invest in archiving the less exciting, but still essential physical record of the work it took to build a solid foundation for professional practices.

An article by Viral Storm published this past month in regard to the future of paper use reminds us that it’s important to remember the future isn’t written. Heard that phrase before? Back to the Future fans will certainly recognize it.