Paperless society

Tech & Net News on technology and the Internet from The Times and Sunday Times:

"He is looking forward to a near-paperless world where we won’t want magazines, students won’t need textbooks, and paper forms will be redundant. It is a vision we have been told about before — the paperless office was supposed to have been the norm by now — but Gates is adamant that we are nearing a turning point."

Well, I guess that will make a nice challenge for Mr. Gates. I have waited forever to dispense with paper. I really thought we were going to do it, silly me. Instead we have used more and more and more. Hard copies are essential. Technology is not stable , easily currupted and too quickly stuffed up. You have back ups of the back ups of the back ups, the network, stand alone, laptop and then the other computer. You have a flash disk copy, a CD copy , a hard drive copy and then , the all essential paper copy. Putting your faith in digital data is a big ask. Files bugger up, go missing, won't open. I can see how stuffed the world will become when we are totally digital. Reading a magazine on a computer is not the same experience. As, for encyclopedias, I find my print copies are still better at orientating me to any subject. The electronic stuff either doesn't materialise in a search, or it's biased or it's too brief. Going digital was the worst thing encyclopedias did because it deprived us of facts. Now you get 10 different versions of the same thing, but who cares, why spoil a good story with the truth. But...if anyone can get this together in a viable fashion , it will be Mr. Gates because he broke the ground and market before. He does seem to have the overall vision,as such. We'll see. I have been desperate to keep my trees in the soil. We need them.