Paperless office

VI RICORDATE QUELLA cosa per cui tutti prendono in giro Bill Gates: la sua idea dell'ufficio senza carta, il "paperless office"? Beh, salta fuori che in realtà l'idea non era per niente di Bill Gates (tanto per cambiare). E come per magia all'improvviso sembra meno stupida... (e il problema molto più serio che non una semplice profezia sbagliata).

Money Quote: Thirty-three years ago this month the phrase "paperless office" entered the business lexicon in a BusinessWeek article titled "The Office of the Future." In the article, George Pake, the legendary head of the Xerox (XRX) Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), foresaw technology that by 1995 would let computer users summon on-screen documents "by pressing a button," eliminating the need for much if not all the printed paper cluttering workspaces.

Pake's vision was half-right. Offices brim with network-linked computers, loaded with software that lets users create, read, duplicate, and distribute digital documents. But the dream of a workplace where all that technology would eliminate the need for printed documents remains just that—a dream.