Economies of Ink
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© Joe Casad, Editor in Chief
The "paperless office" was once the dazzling vision of futurists and keynote speakers. Tech blogs and efficiency gurus have been talking about eliminating printers for at least 20 years, but it never really happened – or at least, not yet.
Dear Reader,
The "paperless office" was once the dazzling vision of futurists and keynote speakers. Tech blogs and efficiency gurus have been talking about eliminating printers for at least 20 years, but it never really happened – or at least, not yet. Despite the predictions, contracts, school compositions, tax forms, and other essential documents sometimes require the corporeal manifestation that comes with a printer. In other cases, printing is just easier. I often print the articles I'm editing just because I like to make notes in the margins and draw lines and arrows to sketch out changes.
Printers are still around, but they are subject to the same forces that are affecting the rest of the industry. So even though they look the same, the business arrangements surrounding them are rapidly changing. So-called cloud printing has been with us for several years now. How do we make printers even "smarter"? And is "smart" always good?
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