Even in computer age, society still dependent on paper

Whip out those laptops and Blackberries, but don’t throw out the paper. Technology hasn’t… Whip out those laptops and Blackberries, but don’t throw out the paper. Technology hasn’t replaced it quite yet.

And it probably never will, said Richard Cox, chair of the Library and Information Science Program at Pitt.

“If we even get close to being paperless, I’ll long be retired,” Cox said.

Even despite the convenience of e-mail, Cox said, the University still relies heavily on paper mail and continues to use paper for students’ professor evaluations, something that hasn’t changed in the last 20 years.

And Pitt is far from being an outlier.

In 2006, MeadWestvaco, a packaging company that works with multiple businesses in the food, cosmetic and music industries, surveyed more than 1,000 people to see whether they preferred paper products to electronic products for their planning needs.

Eighty-seven percent of those surveyed said they use paper. Out of that 87 percent, 36 percent use paper only and 51 percent use both paper planning products and electronic planning technology. Thirteen percent use electronic planning products only.

Now, in 2008, a completely paper-free university, especially Pitt, Cox said, is simply a fabled entity. And the irony is that, in some cases, the less the university “needs” paper, the more it tends to use.

In the last fiscal year – July 1, 2006, to June 30, 2007 – Computer Services and Systems Development at Pitt purchased 22.3 million sheets of paper for the University’s seven campus computing labs, CSSD director Jinx Walton said.

But Professor Theodore Steinberg, of State University of New York, Fredonia, said he doesn’t use paper as much as he once did.

He used to receive stacks of memos as the English department’s former associate dean.

“God, I used to hate that,” Steinberg said and added that now it’s all done by e-mail. He said he works more efficiently on a computer.

“I don’t dread sitting down to file a report on the computer the way I used to dread sitting down to do it on a typewriter,” he said.

But the extinction of paper might have too many disadvantages, Steinberg said.

While Fredonia’s and other universities’ technological advancements – submitting grades electronically and digitizing library systems – are practical, Steinberg is concerned.

As a medieval literature professor, Steinberg often needs to read manuscripts from as early as the 12th century. He can do this at a library.

But if he wanted to re-read the draft of his second book, Steinberg would be out of luck. He wrote it on a Commodore 64, a computer from the 1980s that nobody has anymore, he said.

“That worries me,” Steinberg said. “The stuff that was written in 1200 is accessible, while the stuff I wrote in 1990 is not.”

“Even when the world is interacting by digital means,” Cox said, paper is convenient. Electronics constantly have to be upgraded, he said, making “digital stuff” less secure than paper.

And with the increase in technology, people are actually printing more, said Christinger Tomer, a professor in the School of Information Sciences at Pitt.

“People read documents in print because it’s a more physically benign experience,” Tomer said. “You’re not looking at a bazillion pulsating dots.”

Because students print more as a result of technological advancements, Pitt professor Tony Novosel said departments might spend less money on paper. With the 900 pages of printing paper allotted to each Pitt student per semester, teachers don’t have to make copies of class materials.

But what about the cost of paper textbooks?

Increasing at an average of 6 percent annually, textbook prices nearly tripled from December 1986 to December 2004, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

Plus, paper, printing and editorial costs account for an average of 32.1 cents of every dollar a textbook costs – the largest portion of a textbook’s costs, according to a price breakdown from the National Association of College Stores.

Ken Fujiuchi, a librarian at Buffalo State University, said that while textbook companies would still charge “an arm and a leg” for online texts, having more of them would reduce the problem of having only one physical copy of a book in the library.

Often, he said, students must be waitlisted to take out books.

But with efficiency sometimes comes carelessness.

Students tend to write e-mails in an informal, choppy style, giving immediate responses that are not often well thought out, even when e-mailing professors, said Michael Jabot, a professor at SUNY Fredonia.

“When you go to apply for a job, you better not be that informal,” Jabot said. “That could really put you in a jam.”

Fujiuchi added that writing things electronically makes it too easy to create content, so people don’t take as much pride in their work.

“It’s just so easy to hit ‘save,'” Fujiuchi said, which is why many students don’t produce paper copies of their work.

No one hits “save” more than Novosel, who relies on the Internet for his teaching style.

“I’m a geek,” Novosel joked about his love for technology.

Novosel found using Blackboard Academic Suite to post assignments and syllabi to be easy and convenient, he said, adding that technology has opened up other opportunities inside the classroom.

Last year, he couldn’t attend one of his classes because he was traveling. But the students didn’t miss a thing.

Novosel created a PowerPoint presentation on the lecture. He recorded his voice over the lecture and converted it into an mp4 file.

Students could download it onto their computers and listen to it on their iPods or other media players.

“I find it’s just amazing that you can do these things,” he said.

Novosel’s students e-mail assignments to him. He then uses “track changes” in Microsoft Word to type in corrections and send them back to the students. He said it’s the easiest way to provide feedback.

This is one example of the way human communication has changed, a factor that Fujiuchi said will shape a paperless society. He said a paperless society depends on how well people can adapt to a new way of reading.

“There are some people who don’t mind reading off their cell phones or reading off a screen, but most people like to have hard copies,” he said. “It’s mostly because there’s no technology that can replace paper.”