Welcome to Electronic Paper. This is a new weblog by Edward Vielmetti to explore some of the ideas behind a stream of news and creativity that come from the collision between the world of computers and the world of paper.
More and more of our lives - our reading, our writing, our newspapers, our electronic medical records, our voting, our grocery lists and holiday cards and indie zines and baby photos - are starting out electronic and staying electronic. As we rush headlong to digitize I wonder what we are losing in the process. How many people struggle with keeping up with their email when a simple paper postcard once in a while would make more of an impact?
This blog will be explore the collision of the paper and electronic worlds, where they intersect happily and where they fight madly. I'm turning on a blog search for "electronic and paper" and will comment on what flies past, just to build a baseline. The other thing which I'll try for is a stream of scans of interesting paper artifacts, showing things that were done better (or at least differently) in another era.
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The answer to your question really depends on what you're doing with the paper, doesn't it?
Posted by: JoshD | October 07, 2005 at 02:02 AM
Yup, it all depends.
I'm trying here to collect enough examples and instances and case studies and stories that you could start to answer that.
For instance, for some people, paper is better than computers for creative writing. That's a matter of personal taste and learned habits, and it's going to be hard to argue with that one.
For some other issues, though, it's less crystal clear. Are electronic medical records better, worse, or just different than paper medical records? It may have a lot to do with the nature of the patient and their course through the world and through the healthcare system. If all of your paper records are underwater because of Katrina, you wish you had electronic copies; on the other hand, if you change health plans and your primary medical record is all-electronic in an incompatible format with the new plan, you might as well have been on paper before.
I'm working on the 20 questions version of this question, to suss out the facets of it.
Posted by: Edward Vielmetti | October 07, 2005 at 02:11 AM
I was being a bit sly; this really is the ten million dollar question when it comes to paper replacement technology, and "what you're doing" with paper is a bit of a difficult question, to boot, because it touches on the many facets of your intent and goals. Creative exploring? Creative development? Stream of consciousness writing? I'd use paper for the first, a combination of computer and paper (printouts) for the second, and a computer for the third.
Also, I assume you've read "The Myth of the Paperless Office?" The authors do a good job of defining what the strengths and weaknesses of paper are, in relation to digital media.
Posted by: JoshD | October 07, 2005 at 02:19 AM