Text File

Aucbvax.2309 fa.works utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!works Thu Jul 16 07:57:49 1981 Making paper go away >From Joe.Newcomer@CMU-10A Thu Jul 16 07:55:36 1981 You've fallen into the same trap that most people do. If what you want is the ability to scan quickly thru a document, this suggests that a capability the computer should have is to scan quickly thru a document. If you want to make notes, the computer should provide the ability to make notes. If you want to doodle in color, the computer should provide the ability to doodle in color. What you've stated is not reasons for retaining paper, but a specification of what capabilities we need in a computer if we want paper to go away.

Now current technology makes a lot of this extremely difficult. For example, at very slow data rates (say, 9600, which is as close to DC as one would care to get), it is unreasonable to browse thru most large documents. With 24-line screens, finding enough context to make sense of what has been typed is nearly impossible. But saying that online retrieval will never replace paper is silly; it means you've failed to adapt the computer to what people need.

The observation that it is useful to print things out on paper so they don't have to be stored online is likewise looking at the problem from the wrong side. What I want is a method of taking silly pieces of paper and getting them onto the machine so I don't need to store the paper! Fact: secondary storage is cheap, is getting cheaper, and even primitive archiving techniques make it look even cheaper. Why should I have to do something (file a piece of paper) that the computer can do more effectively?

I keep all my source listings in hardcopy form. Why? Because it is faster to look something up on hardcopy than online. Why? because a 24x80, 9600 baud terminal is too small and too slow to accomodate me. If I had four or five 60-line screens with a typical effective bandwidth (including disk latency, etc.) of about 100Kbaud, I wouldn't need to print anything. One way of achieving this is to use multiple windows, but it is not the only way (another is to have four or five 60-line terminals).

If paper is more effective, then there is a mismatch between the needs of the person and the software. I don't see anything which has yet made that statement even suspect. What we need to do is explore how to eliminate that mismatch. joe

----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/

This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:

1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.

2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.