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  3. Whatever Happened to the Paperless Office? For office innovators, the unrealized dream of the "paperless" office is a classi

Whatever Happened to the Paperless Office? For office innovators, the unrealized dream of the "paperless" office is a classi

admin2013-10-08  21
问题                 Whatever Happened to the Paperless Office?
    For office innovators, the unrealized dream of the "paperless" office is a classic example of high-tech hubris. Today’s office is drowning in more paper than ever before. But after decades of publicity, American offices may finally be losing their paper obsession. The demand for paper used to exceed the growth of the US economy, but the past two or three year have seen a marked slowdown in sales. Analysts attribute the decline to a variety of causes. Escaping our craving for paper, however, will be anything but a cold-turkey affair. There are some functions that paper serves where a screen display doesn’t work.
    In the early to mid 90s, a booming economy and improved desktop printers helped boost paper sales by 6 to 7 percent each year. But now, plain white office paper will see less than a 4 percent growth rate, despite the strong overall economy. A primary reason for the changes is that for the first time ever, some 47 percent of the workforce entered the job market after computers had already been introduced to offices. In addition, analysts point to the lifeless employment market for white-collar workers—the primary driver of office paper consumption—for the shift in paper usage.
    The changing attitudes toward paper have finally caught the attention of paper companies, says Richard Harper, a researcher at Microsoft and coauthor of the book, The Myth of the Paperless Office (2002). "All of a sudden, the paper industry has started thinking,’ We need to learn more about the behavioral aspects of paper use,’" he says. To reduce paper use, some companies are working to combine digital and paper capabilities. For example, Xerox Corp. is developing electronic paper: thin digital displays that respond to a stylus, like a pen on paper. Notations can be easily erased or saved digitally.
    Even with such technological advances, the improved capabilities of digital storage continues to act against " paperlessness", argues Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster at the Institute for the Future, a think tank in Palo Alto, Calif. In his prophetic and metaphorical 1989 essay, "The Electronic Pinata, " he wrote" , The information industry today is like a huge electronic pinata, composed of a thin paper crust surrounding an electronic core." The growing paper crust "is most noticeable, but the hidden electronic core that produces the crust is far larger—and growing more rapidly. The result is that we are becoming paperless, but we hardly notice at all." "That’s one of the great ironies of the information age," Saffo says. " It’s just common sense that the more you talk to someone by phone or computer, it inevitably leads to a face-to-face meeting."
    As buzzwords go, " paperless" has been known for a long time with little or no results.
    The term "paperless clearing houses" was probably first coined in a 1966 article in the Harvard Business Review in reference to the emergence of digital data storage. But " paperlessness" did not enter the public’s imagination until 1975, when a Business Week article entitled " The Office of the Future" predicted that by 1990"most record-handling will be electronic." Throughout the 1980s and 90s, the term "paperless" came to embody technology’s promise to permanently change the way people do business. The enthusiasm sometimes took on a life of its own, with the trendiest companies demanding " paperlessness" long before it was practical.
Which of the following may be responsible for the current slowdown in paper sales?
选项 A、Decline in economic growth.
B、The convenience of desktop printing.
C、Increased use of computers in the office.
D、The unfavorable situation in overall job market.
答案C
解析 本题考查因果细节。第一、二段分析了纸张消费的趋势。第一段第四、五句提到，过去几年问，纸张销售的增长势头明显减缓(marked slowdown)，分析家认为出现这种下降趋势的原因众多。第二段先回顾90年代促使纸张销售增长(boost paper sales)的原因：经济的飞速发展和桌面打印机性能的提高。第二句but转折指出，现在尽管经济总体发展强劲，纸张销售增长率却在下降。第二段最后给出了纸张销售下降的两个原因：一是更多的办公室工作人员使用电脑；二是白领员工就业市场不景气。综上分析，[C]是纸张势头减缓的原因，为正确项。[D]将文中的“白领员工就业市场”扩大为“整个就业市场”。[A]与事实不符，第二段第二句已经明确指出经济总体发展强劲。[B]是第二段提到的纸张销售增长的原因。
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