Compare & Contrast

In our new age, technology is all around us, and it shapes our lives, it helps keep us organized, it makes us want to scream at times, but overall it has made our lives better and easier. The Internet has revolutionized the way we do everything: look up how to fix a car, buy tools to fix the car, how a car works, where to buy a car, which car to buy, what people think of the car, but basically anything you want to know is online somewhere, in some format. The Internet isn't limited to just information, you can send emails to many people, you can send files and papers to many people faster and much easier, instant message someone anywhere in the world and they can receive it in less than a second, and you chat with someone using a webcam, so you can show them something in real time. Building on that, there are online collaborative tools too, for example, you can host video conferences , or have online chat rooms with file sharing and many other features, so people can easily share ideas. Another big benefit from a digital office is the amount of paper used is greatly reduced, which saves money and helps the environment. An average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of paper a year; that is 200 reams of paper which is equivalent to one average tree.

Now if we change gears here for a minute, to actually talk about a conventional office setting, you most likely think of rows and rows of cubicles, with nice large incoming and outgoing paper piles, and the staple of any office, the copy machine. Every office also has to keep a large records room, with papers dating back to the beginning of time, making finding any one document a very arduous quest. There is also the typical large board room where people sit for hours editing, writing, rewriting, and deciding things. Now there is an advantage to having everything in hand where you can turn it over and over and scan it any way you want, jot notes on whatever the document which might be easier than on a computer.

There are many technologies coming out soon that might change how all that works, or will they? Just a few years ago Microsoft released Microsoft Surface, which was a multi-touch touchscreen computer designed to be used as almost a table. They have also been working on interactive white boards, which uses a projector screen and a camera to track your hands. This is demonstrated in a big way in the show NCIS: Los Angeles. In NCIS: LA they have a large tactics room where they are seen throwing images from the table to the walls. Stuff like this usually seems pretty unrealistic, but that is entirely possible now, all the technologies are here, they just need to be combined in the right way.

This concept of being able to write and draw and visualize in real time, I think, could revolutionize they way brainstorming or board meetings or any number of things are done, because you can save everything drawn or written, forever, and reference it whenever you need. The downside is, these technologies are not cheap at the moment, and all large ones require projectors, which are not cheap, but it would cut down severely on how much you spend on pens, time spent jotting notes and other tedious tasks in board meetings. It would also allow you to view the screen remotely, if you were sick or couldn't make it to work.

In the same realm of technologies is the “slate” PC, which is completely different from a traditional laptop. A “slate” has no lid, it doesn't have a keyboard or mouse, it is just a screen with everything else filling in behind that, the way it does that is it is completely touchscreen. The current “slate” PC's out are thick, slow and very expensive, because they are limited by the battery and processors that are slow. With the Intel Atom processor, however, that will probably soon change.

Apple is set to release their “slate” computer soon, which is sure to be a highly polished and slick machine, and will probably be a huge leap forward in touchscreen technology. I expect other companies to follow suit and start producing cheaper and more user friendly slate PCs soon, which will make them a much more viable solution for offices, or really anyplace.
A place that paper in the work place still have an advantage is that you can hold a report in your hand and look it over and make little marks on it for reference, which is much harder to do on a computer, plus it is much easier in the eyes to read a piece of paper than on a computer screen.

One product that is forging ahead, and might solve this problem is called an E-reader, which has a screen designed to look exactly like paper and be very easy to read. Currently these E-readers are just limited to displaying PDFs, which is all well and good, but I can see in the near future when you can make all kind of marks, highlights and edits with your finger or a stylus, also, there is one company working on a screen for an E-reader that is flexible so it is even more like paper, which, at this point is just cool.

In a traditional office you have a paper trail for documents, you have signatures on the document that proves it was that person who read it, which is slightly more difficult with everything in electronic form. For example, if someone left their computer logged in you could access confidential information, or send fake orders out, where as if everything was on paper that would be a lot harder to do. In an all digital office, you also have the potential to have a cyber attack, and potentially have all your data compromised. To counter cyber threats you can have advanced security measures in place, but those usually cost money. On the other hand, someone could walk out with important documents at a traditional office.

One thing that always poses a threat to any office is a fire, which could cripple any office building, but it also has the potential to destroy all the data,. An office that has paper backups of all their data is more susceptible to fire and natural disaster. In an all digital office you could back up your data in several locations so no matter what you have a backup. Another problem is if you lose power, all your computers would go down, but in large building they have battery backup systems and backup generators, but those can't support a whole building for very long. With a powerful generator you could run a large building for maybe a day if you had enough fuel, but that gets very expensive to have a hugely powerful generator running for that long.

Another thing that can happen is your Internet connection can go down, which essentially cuts the building off from the outside Internet. In a traditional office you have a significantly reduced power usage from significantly fewer computers and the accompanied cooling which makes your business that less susceptible to power failure.

Going on the line of worst case scenarios, one that tops all other scenarios is an EMP blast. EMP stands for electro magnetic pulse, which has the potential to destroy anything electronic. In the 70's and 80's the only way to do this was a high altitude nuclear detonation, but now, with superconductors, it is possible to make them much smaller and more targeted. Now this is a very remote, unlikely situation, but It is always a possibility to consider, if you had everything backed up on computers, even on tape storage, which is much more resilient than normal hard drives, you could still potentially loose everything. If, for example, a government building that held Social Security numbers, stored everything on computers, and was hit by an EMP, they would lose everything. In this case, hard copy backups would be much better. There are measures you could take to shield your data from EMP, but there is no perfect solution.

A much more realistic scenario is if you are sick and can't get to work, but you need some files from work, or there is an important meeting, you can do what is called telecommuting, where you go on your computer at home and then log into your computer at work, where you can view files or watch and participate in meetings and basically do all your normal work from home, but unfortunately they don't have this for school yet.

One thing every office, business, government agency and school uses is paper, and loads of it, but that's not it, you have all the ink that you use printing on the paper, and the staples and paper clips and pens and pencils and many other things. If you add up all the costs, it gets very expensive very quick, with toner over $100 a cartridge and paper up to $0.05-$0.10 a sheet you can burn through paper and money fast. In an all digital office there would still be uses for paper and typical office supplies, but not nearly as much, which not only saves money, it saves trees and it saves the environment, which is greater than saving money.

My personal opinion is that an all digital office, business or school would be overall more productive, but only if they were that way from the start. I think if you were to try to convert a traditional office to an all digital one, it would be significantly harder and much less successful. There will always be a place for paper with hard copies of important information, but I think there is defiantly a future for digital integration.