Vassar Technology Today | What computers still cannot do: Replace paper and pencil

Matthew Leung Managing Editor

Since the time we first decided to attach the eraser to the pencil, we have seen many forms of technology integrating with one another. Cell phones can display time, freeing your wrist of a watch. Even though watches themselves are not completely obsolete, many people do not wear a watch today, but rather use a cell phone to tell time.

With the inception of the modern computer in the 1970s, the manifesto of a “paperless office” emerged, promoting the idea that everything that can be done on paper can be done on the computer. Ideally, people would prefer to use computers exclusively and would eliminate paper use altogether. Over these 30 years, while it has been easy for digital technologies to follow an age-old trend of rapid integration, the old paper reels persist.

Digital technologies integrate with each other

On its 3.5-inch screen with video capabilities, Apple’s iPhone, an all-in-one iPod, cell phone, digital camera, and Internet browser, is due to be released in June (with Cingular as exclusive carrier) and can potentially replace the portable DVD player, albeit for $599. Portable DVD players face replacement by the more versatile and intelligent iPhone and laptop. The latest HP Compaq nc6400 ($1,100), for example, features a wide screen that is great for movies, and includes a fingerprint reader, as well as a Verizon or Cingular wireless broadband adapter that allows you to tag onto a cellular wireless network to connect to the Internet anywhere on the road. Even highly integrated devices such as the iPhone and the personal laptop already overlap many features.

Digital technologies integrate with paper

Epo’s digital pen (epos.com, $80) can digitally record writing on any paper and transfer it to the computer. Similar products include digital tablets, which allow you to draw onto your computer screen via a tablet made of many tiny sensors. Efforts to replace the centuries-old classroom chalkboard include eBeam (e-beam.com, $750), a device that clips onto the side of any ordinary whiteboard and digitally records anything written in chalk directly onto the computer. A more costly option is the Smart Board (smarttech.com, about $5,000 depending on model), used both by educators—including those in the Vassar physics department—and businesses. The package includes a projector and a digital blackboard that is, in effect, a giant digital tablet from 48 to 94 inches, depending on the model. The projector displays the computer screen onto the tablet, on which you can draw directly, as if it were a real chalkboard.

Other Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) attempts include the Tablet PC, which is an expensive version of a laptop (about $1,500 from manufacturers such as Motion Computing and Gateway). Tablet PCs have a 306-degree-tilt LCD screen with sensors built in that, like a personal digital assistant (PDA), allow you to work and write directly onto the screen. Another innovation from Philips, digital picture frames, displays a slide show with an LCD screen. To replace books, the e-reader from Sony (sonystyle.com, $349) is a small six-inch LCD display screen for reading e-books, or electronic versions of books sold online.

The moral of the story: Paper wins
Despite the fact that digital technologies can easily integrate, and despite new innovations such as LCD screens and sensors, paper is still indispensable. Drawing on a PDA or on the Smart Board proves awkward, and the working space is always limited, since LCD screens and sensors are expensive.

Even with projectors installed in most classrooms, instruction often takes place on the traditional chalkboard, and many students take notes on paper. Digital technology disprupts certain organic qualities of paper by abstracting and formalizing information from the sensor and representing it in a binary way with dots on a screen, for example. In fact, most students do not read documents and posts from Blackboard on the computer screen, but would rather print them.

When it comes to basic tasks such as reading and taking notes, digital technology becomes more of a middleman than a direct replacement for the paper and chalkboard. Some professors even prefer displaying notes and photos with overhead transparencies on a projector rather than with PowerPoint. At best, technology facilitates the use of paper and chalkboards in the same way that e-mail facilitates and hence increases the use of paper. According to The Myth of the Paperless Office, for example, email has increased the use of paper in the office by 40 percent.

Before paper, humans made drawings on rocks or sand. While paper was an invention-of-the-wheel kind of development, digital technology only proves able to complement the wheel, but cannot serve as a substitute.