Digital technology can completely change your production
processes and your business processes. It can also free workers from
slow paper processes. Replacing paper processes with digital
processes frees knowledge workers to do more useful work. The
all-digital work place is usually called " the paperless office," a phrase
that goes back to at least 1973. It's a great vision. No more piles of
paper in which you can't find what you need. No more searching
through heaps of reports to find marketing information or a sales
number. But the paperless office never seems to actually arrive.
The Xerox Corporation did more to promote the concept
than any other company. In 1974-5 it was talking about the
" office of the future" that would have computers and e-mail
with information online. Between 1975 and 1987 several
business newspapers promised that the paperless office wasn't far
off but in 1988 I told a journalist, "This vision of a paperless
office is still very, very far away.