[Web4lib] Paperless society

[Richard Wiggins]

Brewster is a visionary, but not only is his comment humorous, it's
downright scary.  The paradox of the digital age is we don't keep what we
should, and we lose what we shouldn't.  We are nowehere near solving the
digital preservation problem.  In many cases we don't know which digital
copy is "the" copy.

This is why most computer scientists and professionals favor voting systems
with paper trails.

If you've implemented a digital document management system with professional
tools and rigorous protocols -- say, for medical records, deeds, birth and
death certificates, etc. that's one thing.  If you're talking about
documents that whiz around the office, especially those that need
signatures, paper is of course still common.

Brewster has done amazing things with the Internet Archive but I think the
relative success of the Wayback Machine may have skewed his thinking a bit.

/rich

On Feb 11, 2008 9:29 AM, Jocelyn Shaw <redfernshaw at gmail.com> wrote:

> I had to chuckle at the quote:
>
>  "'Paper is no longer the master copy; the digital version is,' says
> Brewster Kahle, the founder and director of the Internet Archive, a
> nonprofit digital library. 'Paper has been dealt a complete deathblow.
> When
> was the last time you saw a telephone book?'"...
>
> Having used the phone book twice in the last 20 minutes to answer
> reference
> questions I found it quite humorous.
>
>