Not by a long shot, says William Powers. As a fellow of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, Powers authored a discussion paper entitled “Hamlet’s Blackberry: Why paper is eternal,” † in which he acknowledges the shortcomings of paper, but makes an insightful argument for its continued relevance.
Says Powers:

There are cognitive, cultural and social dimensions to the human-paper dynamic that come into play every time any kind of paper, from a tiny Post-it note to a groaning Sunday newspaper, is used to convey, retrieve or store information. Paper does these jobs in a way that pleases us, which is why, for centuries, we have liked having it around. It’s also why we will never give it up as a medium, not completely. For some of the roles paper currently fulfills in our media lives, there is no better alternative currently available. And the most promising candidates are technologies that are striving to be more, not less, like paper. Indeed, the pertinent question may be not whether the old medium will survive, but whether the new ones will ever escape paper’s enormous shadow.

Powers relates the findings of Abigail J. Sellen and Richard H. R. Harper, who in the mid-1990s conducted a study of how employees of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., managed the flow of information in their daily work. The IMF was chosen because it is a “knowledge-centered” organization that uses a lot of documents, and because it had invested heavily in technology.

For many of their most crucial daily tasks, such as reading documents, collaborating with others, and work that involves thinking and planning, IMF staff preferred paper, even when there were digital versions of the same documents available.

Workers liked the way paper documents could be conveniently passed around and discussed. They even appreciated the fact that paper takes up space, explaining that the clutter of paper in their offices actually helped them think, plan, and keep track of inputs and ideas.

One employee, whose job it was to review other people’s written reports, explained his preference for paper by saying, “You’ve got to print it out to do it properly. You have to settle down behind your desk and get into it,” Powers says. Phrases such as “settle down” and “get into it” suggest a state of mind associated with a particular kind of reading—the full-immersion, deep-dive kind that occurs when a reader is able to shut out the world and truly focus. He wonders if paper somehow contributes to achieving this deeper state.

In a different study that looked at how people in various professions read, Sellen and Harper found that paper has four traits that specifically assist reading:

1. Tangibility. This refers to the way that we navigate a paper document or book using our eyes and hands together. “When a document is on paper, we can see how long it is, we can flick through the pages... we can bend over a corner while searching for a section elsewhere. In other words, paper helps us work our way through documents.”

2. Spatial Flexibility. When working with multiple paper texts, they can be spread out around a large area or reduced to fit a smaller space, depending on our needs.

3. Tailorability. With paper, it’s easy to underline, scribble in the margins, and otherwise annotate a text we are reading.

4. Manipulability. Because paper can be moved around, one can shuffle effectively among different paper sources, for example putting one page aside in order to concentrate on another.

Powers also tells the story of American advertising agency Chiat/Day, which boldly implemented a paperless office in 1993. The company went as far as replacing desks with sofas and removing all filing cabinets and other potential hiding places for paper.

The upshot? Chiat/Day’s employees almost immediately rebuilt their papered world. One woman bought a child’s red wagon, put her paper files in it, and trailed it around the corridors after her. Most people re-created their desks in the trunks of their cars, where they stored their files and notebooks, dashing in and out of the building to the parking lot during meetings. The company was eventually bought by a traditionalist rival and normal life resumed.

Our view
In the financial services industry, paperbased marketing and sales collateral adds a tangible element to products and services that are mainly intangible. While paper isn’t the best choice for every application, it’s certainly here to stay. //

For a copy of William Powers’ full 75-page paper, send us an e-mail at asif@wickware.ca.