So, are paper books an endangered species? Quite likely in the long run, but perhaps not as quickly as techno-enthusiasts imagine. After all, we’re still waiting for the paperless office to arrive, decades after it was forecast. (The typical office worker still consumes about 10,000 sheets of paper per year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.)
It’s true that sales of e-books have grown dramatically, to 8.5 percent of the market this year from 2.9 percent last year, according to the Association of American Publishers. But that’s still only a fraction of what’s being sold on paper.
<idle musing>
I went to the insurance agent yesterday to sign a couple of forms for insurance renewal changes. She had me sign it on regular paper and gave me a copy. She said they will now scan the original into their computer and destroy the hard copy. So, they are paperless, right?!!
She told me that the companies won't accept digital signatures, but want a hard copy signature. Of course, they don't want to store the paper, so they scan it. How backwards is that?
</idle musing>
1 comment:
I think we humans suffer from the delusion that one kind of records is really more authentic, secure, dependable, permanent (everlasting?) -- attributes, it should be noted, that believers might suppose belong only to God; in fact, however, all records depend on the longevity of the medium on which they are preserved and the trust in which human beings place in that medium. There's something grand and at the same time pathetic about the human determination to preserve the authentic record of time and events past.
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