Paper Ghosts

For those of you who read my articles, you’ll perhaps notice a trend that I’m a great fence-sitter when it comes to the good and the bad of technology. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong about that – I think that it’s good to remain open-minded and see the pros and the cons of any situation or issue. However, as I thought about the subject of this article, I’ve come to the conclusion that this article will be a bit different and I will present a very definite opinion on thais subject.

There is an old saying that a ghost is a spirit that roams this earth because it doesn’t know that it’s died yet.

My recent revelation is that we have such a ghost among us now. This spirit that does not know that it has died a quiet and slow death is paper. I might surprise some people with the arguments presented here, especially with my love of reading and my *ahem* advanced number of birthdays. As I think along these lines, I see that technology has advanced to the degree where paper is not as necessary and in a lot of respects, it hinders us.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve obviously grown up with paper and I love the thought of a printed book, and I certainly can’t imagine my weekend routines with an early morning coffee and going to the front door to get my paper, but the benefits of the electronic age far outstrip the nostalgia of being able to hold printed paper.

Were paper to be made obsolete – basically eradicated from our world, would I miss it? Absolutely. The romantic side of me loves the theory of printed page, but I like to think that I’m pragmatic enough to accept its demise.

Through my lifetime, I’ve seen typewriters, adding machines and ledgers (physical paper based) having died a quiet death and we’ve managed just fine. Where all files were stored in file cabinets, there can be no doubt that our technological replacement of a database has given us capabilities that just simply weren’t possible with filing cabinet storage.

Paper has a wonderful feel and smell to it. Especially with a handwritten note you can get so much out of not only what was written, but how it was written and the underlying emotions and passion that you’d rarely see in an email. None of that is disputed. But the stark reality is that as a society, we evolve, and if we don’t evolve, we become extinct. Either or our tools become obsolete – or we do.

I’m not suggesting that paper will ever truly disappear from our world, but it is lost the vast majority of its usefulness and it has come to the point where it hinders us more than helps us.

Much like my “Cash is King” post, we need to accept technology into our lives and use it to whatever extent that we deem necessary.

When the ballpoint pen replaced the fountain pen which replaced the quill, I’m sure that there was equal uproar and concern about losing that esoteric aspect of our lives. We adapted and realized that the older way of doing things were wonderful, but totally impractical as a tool when we have so much more at our disposal.

To further illustrate my point (and yet, I know that I’m dating myself again!) I remember distinctly doing up assignments on a typewriter. When I made mistakes, I had to use white-out or replace the ribbon of the typewriter with the eraser ribbon and retype white powder over my mistakes.

It’s wonderful to be nostalgic – there’s nothing wrong with that but we need to keep in mind that we’re meant to expand our horizons – that one of the things that differentiate us from so many animal is our ability to use tools to grow.