Paperless Revolution

Remember when everyone was so excited about ‘the paperless revolution’? Computers were going to replace paper books and files with electronic information storage. Time would be saved, trees would be spared. I don’t think things worked out that way.
Computer generated junk mail is the most obvious indication that something is terribly wrong. Although cheap bulk postal rates don’t help, it is computers that make it possible for businesses to use mailing lists and advertising pieces by the dumpster load. While my mailbox fills up with junk, real mail- that is stuff that I might want to read- has been replaced with e-mails that I don’t enjoy or remember. If an e-mail says something notable, I print it out.
Print-outs are the real proof that there never was a paperless revolution. There was a time when I used less than a notebook’s worth of paper a year. Now I buy it by the ream, but it isn’t the tidy packages of colored, textured, weighted papers that annoy, but rather the paper that has already been through a printer. Important or useful information from the web is a ‘might as well print.’ Even worse is the ‘I can’t find the printout. I’ll just print another.’ I now have more information that I will never use than I ever could have had before printouts.
Without computers I would not be up to my eyebrows in paper. Producing paperwork any other way is just too much work.
Nancy Sherer