How much has technology changed our lives?I saw an indication when reading John Grisham's latest legal thriller, The Associate. There's an exchange between two old college buddies, Kyle and Joey. Kyle is under surveillance (part of the story, of course), so he goes to old-school methods to contact his buddy ... like writing a letter. Joey answers:
"What's with the snail mail? Your handwriting really sucks ... my hand is aching and I feel like such an old fart writing with ink."
It sounds left-field futuristic, but we are moving toward a paperless society, bit by bit. I guess you can say fewer trees are being killed to cover our daily needs, but a lot more electrons are dying in agony.
A productivity blog called Dumb Little Man recently ran a piece about steps one can take to eliminate paper use in his or her life. And while I'm using a lot less paper these days, I'm not completely paperless. Nor do I plan to be.
I haven't owned a printer in years. It's not moved any higher on my shopping list, either. The last time I owned a printer, I went through a ream of paper every month or two. Most of that printing was unnecessary, now that I think about it. About the only things I need to print now are my resume (a factor now that I'm in job-search mode), charts to songs I'm learning, the occasional letter, and that's about it. If I need to get something printed I can put the photos on a thumb drive and get that done anywhere.
Here's where Jay Scarrozzo, who wrote the DLM piece, suggests technology can take the place of paper:
- Books: DLM is big on the idea of ebooks and their offshoots. If you have something like an Amazon Kindle, you can load some 1,500 full-length books onto your handheld device and take it with you. I understand you can even download the Kindle software onto your laptop and save a step there. A whole lot less paper, no clutter, no bookshelves ...
... you can have it.
I do have a few books loaded on my computers -- mostly old ones from the free Project Gutenberg site -- but I can't get interested in a full conversion to electronic reading. I like the weight of a book in my lap. I like the feel and smell of the paper. The mere act of turning the page of a really good book is like opening another gift. I can shove a bookmark wherever I want and do something else -- like read another book. I'll often have three books going at a time; does that make me ADHD?
When I read, I'm a big annotator and use high-lighter pens liberally, which are habits that don't lend themselves well to electronic books.
So while I find the idea of e-book readers intriguing, they're for other people.
- Magazines: I don't have many at all, and I used to be a big magazine reader. I can go on line to get most of that information, and the magazine industry is dying even faster than newspaper publishing.
- Newspapers: That used to be a daily habit, and back then I'd get two or three of them -- one for local news and one for national. But somewhere I skipped the next logical step, going to the newspaper's web site for my daily fix. Today, I RSS everything. My daily news feeds include the New York Times, Reuters, Associated Press, the local newspapers,and just about everything else. The last newspaper I bought was 10 days ago, and I know that because it's still on the couch, half-read. But folded neatly.
- Sticky notes: Dumb Little Man suggests using your smart phone (for those who have one) or even the notepad feature on your regular cell phone (that's for the rest of us rabble). All phones have that feature now, but by the time I find my electronic notepad, get to it, and start typing on the keypad, I've already got it down on a real index card. Pass. I have experimented with some Web services that will take a phoned-in note and transcribe it into text, and while there's a geekiness factor there, I'd rather have my million-dollar idea down on paper.
- Notepads: Here's another area where you're not going to see me change much. While I do most of my writing -- including first drafts and outlines -- on a computer, I still rough out ideas on a legal pad. I'm also big on making lists and writing little notes to myself, and I always have my Hipster PDA (nothing more than a bunch of index cards held together with a binder clip; the ultimate in understated cool) with me.
- Bills: I get one, from the electric company. But they also send me a paper bill at the same time, so there's no change in the amount of paper used.
- Checks: I write two a month, for rent and for my electric bill, and I have the folks at the bank do that. I can't remember when I last wrote an actual check, but it's not because I've gone high tech. In fact, I went the other way. Nothing beats cash.
So I'm using less paper than I used to. I notice it in my waste stream. I only need to bring my trash can out for pickup every couple of weeks, unless I just cleaned out the fridge. But I'm noticing I'm less of a pack rat than I used to be, because there's less to pack. My desk actually has some clear spots on it. I have a small work table in my living room, and there are a few things piled on it:
- Three books
- Bottle of water
- Two 5x8 legal pads. One carries notes on a couple of songs I'm arranging.
- One 8x11 clipboard, holding brochures for the local college.
- A pair of pliers. It still escapes me why they're there.
- Receipts I've already entered on my spreadsheet. Why don't I throw 'em out already?
- Two miniature, pocket-sized composition books.
- Sheet music -- some bound, some loose.
- Several pens and high-lighters.
- Shoot, there's even room for a cup of coffee, as long as I'm real careful.
Let's not even look at my bookcase, OK? And I'm not even going to get into hard-disk clutter. Not even going to go there.
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Photo by burgermac. If you look hard enough under all that paper, you can tell that's a MacIntosh under there.
hipster PDA
wikipedia = RSS
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