I really don't understand the whole idea of going paperless. The vast majority of paper we get, we don't really need to keep more than a month or so. Bills, etc, when you get them, you review them for errors, if everything looks good you pay it, at most I keep 2 months worth of back bills around. If you close an account, keep the last statement for a year or two. Taxes, insurance papers, titles & deed, those you need to keep long term, but 7 years worth of returns, insurance contracts, deeds & titles will fit easily in one, maybe two, plastic file boxes that you can get from Staples for $20. A 2 draw filing cabinet and a couple plastic file boxes should handle the filing needs of the average family. Most people just keep too much paper. The reason you want to keep paper around is if there is ever a disagreement it is usable in court. I'm not sure scanned documents can be submitted to court, so I would never just scan then shred my tax returns.

Really? Karma? I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone, no matter what. Most of these "guards" are just your average woefully ignorant citizen of America. They believe what the TSA tells them since they don't know any better and don't have the means to think otherwise.

Here you go, already being done.

I've taught software design and engineer and have used the engineering analogy to software in the past.

There is one big difference between building a bridge and software. When you build a bridge it will have many bolts holding it together, but in software the analogy would be having one bolt holding the bridge together. If I use a string library in my code, it will be the same routines that are run no matter where it is called. If the library fails in one part of the application, given the same inputs it will fail in the same fashion in another part of the code.

This lack of redundency is what makes software are to work with. The one bolt has to hold everything.