The Myth of the Paperless Office

Over the past thirty years, many people have proclaimed the imminent arrival of thepaperless office. Yet even the World Wide Web, which allows almost any computer to read and displayanother computer's documents, has increased the amount of printing done. The use of e-mail in anorganization causes an average 40 percent increase in paper consumption. In The Myth of thePaperless Office, Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper use the study of paper as a way to understandthe work that people do and the reasons they do it the way they do. Using the tools of ethnographyand cognitive psychology, they look at paper use from the level of the individual up to that oforganizational culture.Central to Sellen and Harper's investigation is the concept of "affordances"-- the activities that an object allows, or affords. The physical properties of paper (its beingthin, light, porous, opaque, and flexible) afford the human actions of grasping, carrying, folding,writing, and so on. The concept of affordance allows them to compare the affordances of paper withthose of existing digital devices. They can then ask what kinds of devices or systems would make newkinds of activities possible or better support current activities. The authors argue that paper willcontinue to play an important role in office life. Rather than pursue the ideal of the paperlessoffice, we should work toward a future in which paper and electronic document tools work in concertand organizational processes make optimal use of both.

Abigail J. Sellen is a cognitive psychologist at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Bristol, UK.