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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  15
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.
What does Paul Saffo mean by "one of the great ironies of the information age" (Line 16. Para. 4)?
选项 A、Digital innovations have increased paper consumption.
B、The "paperless" office remains an unrealistic dream.
C、Electronic technology puts an end to reliance on paper.
D、Demand for paper drives the development of information industry.
答案A
解析 本题考查文中人物观点。整个第四段集中介绍保罗·萨福的观点。他指出，数字存储性能的提高仍将与“无纸化”相抵触。他用“电子彩罐”的比喻形象地说明了信息产业与纸张消费的关系：日益扩大的纸壳很显眼，但是产生纸壳的那颗电子芯大得多、增加得更快。结果是我们越来越趋向无纸化，但是却几乎意识不到这一点。这种现象被萨福称为是信息时代的一大讽刺。最后他用“电话或电脑聊天反而促进面谈的事实”类比说明“数字技术的发展反而促进了纸张的消费”这一现象。因此[A]是萨福提到的信息时代的一大讽刺。[B]根本没有提到信息技术；[C]与萨福的观点相悖；[D]将“纸张”与“信息工业”两者的关系颠倒了。
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