Corporate Troll has a good point about the tactile nature of having a hard copy. That is something that I think will never go away. I am guilty of it too, but zuzulo has really hit the nail on the head. What are the legal ramifications of electronically signed documents?
Believe it or not ,the US Military, in particular the Army is very nearly paperless now. All Field & Technical Manuals and Army regulations are available in electronic format. Department of the Army and Defense forms are also digital as well. They may be filled out electronically and signed digitally with the Common Access Card (Smart Card to the rest of us) Even the "hard copy" personnel records are a thing of the past with vital paperwork electronically filed on military servers. For the Army, the digital signing is legally binding, but what about the Civilian realm?
Another problem is accessing the electronic documentation. In an office or shop environment, accessing electronic manuals is not that big of an issue. In a field environment, weather that be an on site call as a civilian, or forwardly deployed in the military, that is an issue. You simply cannot be tied down to a desktop. In some cases even a laptop or net book is a stretch, and not a feasible option. Weather you are an IT professional crawling around in access ducts and need to pull up a schematic or a Soldier in the heat of battle that needs to pull up the map of the battle space and/or the operation order, even a net book is not an option.
Users can create electronic forms in a variety of programs, or use those created for them, but what do you do with them? Fill them out at the office? Pull out a laptop or net book? I have created several electronic forms in order to streamline my work, but I am still forced to print them out in order to use them. I think that the release of the Slate format PC this year will start nailing the coffin shut on paper driven systems.
The Slate format has been panned by some critics as being a novelty, one that will have no real use. They said the dame about the Home Computer and the Cell Phone. IF done right, the Slate format has the potential to revolutionize the office space. Paper will never truly go the way of the dinosaur, but it will become the novelty, not the electronics that are replacing it.
The key factors that are inherent to making this a reality though, I think are:
1) A standard for digitally signing documents and the legal acceptance of them.
2) Slate PC's that are capable of producing legally accepted digitally signed documents, weather that be an "etch-a-sketch" signature capture, a Smart Card endorsement or fingerprint reader.
3) Slates that have negligible boot times, (SSD anyone?) batteries that allow for "all day operation" and durability. Durability I think is the key factor on this mark, as sleep states can to a degree remedy the boot time and battery life.
It has been stated that the price point on Slates will be in the neighborhood of about $500. If I can find a Slate that can meet all of my needs, I will happily pay twice that.
The next year of technology offerings will be very telling as to weather the paperless work space will come to fruition.
