khakipuce's Journal: The Computerless Office

Here's an idea I've been peddling for a few years and it meets with a range of comments from "what a load of bollocks" to "the future" so I thought I'd give it an airing here (as if anyone is going to read my Slashdot Journal...)

The name "computerless office" is a reaction to all those people who push the idea of a paperless office - it has never happened and it never will. Paper is easy to transport, easy to modify, works with no power - it JUST WORKS!

By Computerless office, I don't mean an office with no computers, but an office where you cannot see the computers, where there is no "apparent" hardware on the desktop. One of the fundamental problems of the current desktop technology is that it is a multi-function tool. One machine is expected to be everything from word processing to games to printing to DVD burning - most of that functionality is not used most of the time. It is a general truth that multifunction tools are never as good as one dedicated to a single purpose (why has the Swiss Army Knife not replaced all the tools in your tool box?).

The "computers" in the computerless office are wireless connected devices that are similar to sheets of paper (i.e. are very thin/lightweight and there are many of them). Theses devices can be modified with a pen or pen type device and the paper transmits the mods back to a persistent store. The paper retains it state for as long as the user needs, when finished with it is cleared and re-used.

This means that all your current working documents would be in a pile on your desk, you can work on several at once, scribble numbers on a piece of scrap and have them add up. All the functionality is there (Word-processing, Email, Spreadsheet, Bespoke Apps), the interface has just changed from a key board and screen to something like a piece of paper.

chris hunter http://systemdynamics.co.uk/

Ubiquitous Computing

[arb]

Guys at PARC were working on this for many years. Some of their concepts looked quite interesting, but it won't be happening any time in the near future...