The Myth of the Paperless Office

The Myth of the Paperless Office PDF Author: Abigail J. Sellen
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262250497
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
An examination of why paper continues to fill our offices and a proposal for better coordination of the paper and digital worlds. Over the past thirty years, many people have proclaimed the imminent arrival of the paperless office. Yet even the World Wide Web, which allows almost any computer to read and display another computer's documents, has increased the amount of printing done. The use of e-mail in an organization causes an average 40 percent increase in paper consumption. In The Myth of the Paperless Office, Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper use the study of paper as a way to understand the work that people do and the reasons they do it the way they do. Using the tools of ethnography and cognitive psychology, they look at paper use from the level of the individual up to that of organizational culture. Central to Sellen and Harper's investigation is the concept of "affordances"—the activities that an object allows, or affords. The physical properties of paper (its being thin, light, porous, opaque, and flexible) afford the human actions of grasping, carrying, folding, writing, and so on. The concept of affordance allows them to compare the affordances of paper with those of existing digital devices. They can then ask what kinds of devices or systems would make new kinds of activities possible or better support current activities. The authors argue that paper will continue to play an important role in office life. Rather than pursue the ideal of the paperless office, we should work toward a future in which paper and electronic document tools work in concert and organizational processes make optimal use of both.

The Myth of the Paperless Office

The Myth of the Paperless Office PDF Author: Abigail J. Sellen
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262250497
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book Here

Book Description
An examination of why paper continues to fill our offices and a proposal for better coordination of the paper and digital worlds. Over the past thirty years, many people have proclaimed the imminent arrival of the paperless office. Yet even the World Wide Web, which allows almost any computer to read and display another computer's documents, has increased the amount of printing done. The use of e-mail in an organization causes an average 40 percent increase in paper consumption. In The Myth of the Paperless Office, Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper use the study of paper as a way to understand the work that people do and the reasons they do it the way they do. Using the tools of ethnography and cognitive psychology, they look at paper use from the level of the individual up to that of organizational culture. Central to Sellen and Harper's investigation is the concept of "affordances"—the activities that an object allows, or affords. The physical properties of paper (its being thin, light, porous, opaque, and flexible) afford the human actions of grasping, carrying, folding, writing, and so on. The concept of affordance allows them to compare the affordances of paper with those of existing digital devices. They can then ask what kinds of devices or systems would make new kinds of activities possible or better support current activities. The authors argue that paper will continue to play an important role in office life. Rather than pursue the ideal of the paperless office, we should work toward a future in which paper and electronic document tools work in concert and organizational processes make optimal use of both.

Small Pieces Loosely Joined

Small Pieces Loosely Joined PDF Author: David Weinberger
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786730455
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
The Web has not been hyped enough. That's the startling thesis of this one-of-a-kind book that's sure to become a classic work of social commentary. Just as Marshall McLuhan forever altered our view of broadcast media, Weinberger shows that the new medium of the Web is not only altering social institutions such as business and government but, more important, is transforming bedrock concepts of our culture such as space, time, the public, and even reality itself. Weinberger introduces us to denizens of this new world, among them Zannah, whose online diary turns self-revelation into play; Tim Bray, whose map of the Web reveals what's at the heart of the new Web space; and Danny Yee and Claudiu Popa, part of the new breed of Web experts we trust despite their lack of qualifications. Through stories of life on the Web, an insightful take on some familiar (and some unfamiliar) Web sites, and a wicked sense of humor, Weinberger puts the Web into the social and intellectual context we need to begin assessing its true impact on our lives. The irony, according to Weinberger, is that this new technology is more in tune with our authentic selves than is the modern world. Funny, provocative, and ultimately hopeful, Small Pieces Loosely Joined makes us look at the Web -- and at life -- in a new light. From Small Pieces Loosely Joined: The Web has sent a jolt through our culture, zapping our economy, our ideas about the sharing of creative works, and possibly even institutions such as religion and government. Why? How do we explain the lightning charge of the Web? If it has fallen short of our initial hopes and fears about its transformational powers, why did it excite those hopes and fears in the first place? Why did this technology hit our culture like a bolt from Zeus? Suppose -- just suppose -- that the Web is a new world we're just beginning to inhabit . . . If the Web is changing bedrock concepts such as space, matter, time, perfection, public, knowledge, and morality -- each a chapter of this book -- no wonder we're so damn confused. That's as it should be. The Web is enabling us to rediscover what we've always known about being human: we are connected creatures in a connected world about which we care passionately . . . If this is true, then for all of the over-heated, exaggerated, manic-depressive coverage of the Web, we'd have to conclude that the Web in fact has not been hyped enough.

Burdens of Proof

Burdens of Proof PDF Author: Jean-Francois Blanchette
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026230080X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
An examination of the challenges of establishing the authenticity of electronic documents—in particular the design of a cryptographic equivalent to handwritten signatures. The gradual disappearance of paper and its familiar evidential qualities affects almost every dimension of contemporary life. From health records to ballots, almost all documents are now digitized at some point of their life cycle, easily copied, altered, and distributed. In Burdens of Proof, Jean-François Blanchette examines the challenge of defining a new evidentiary framework for electronic documents, focusing on the design of a digital equivalent to handwritten signatures. From the blackboards of mathematicians to the halls of legislative assemblies, Blanchette traces the path of such an equivalent: digital signatures based on the mathematics of public-key cryptography. In the mid-1990s, cryptographic signatures formed the centerpiece of a worldwide wave of legal reform and of an ambitious cryptographic research agenda that sought to build privacy, anonymity, and accountability into the very infrastructure of the Internet. Yet markets for cryptographic products collapsed in the aftermath of the dot-com boom and bust along with cryptography's social projects. Blanchette describes the trials of French bureaucracies as they wrestled with the application of electronic signatures to real estate contracts, birth certificates, and land titles, and tracks the convoluted paths through which electronic documents acquire moral authority. These paths suggest that the material world need not merely succumb to the virtual but, rather, can usefully inspire it. Indeed, Blanchette argues, in renewing their engagement with the material world, cryptographers might also find the key to broader acceptance of their design goals.

The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff

The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff PDF Author: Ofer Bergman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262336286
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Why we organize our personal digital data the way we do and how design of new PIM systems can help us manage our information more efficiently. Each of us has an ever-growing collection of personal digital data: documents, photographs, PowerPoint presentations, videos, music, emails and texts sent and received. To access any of this, we have to find it. The ease (or difficulty) of finding something depends on how we organize our digital stuff. In this book, personal information management (PIM) experts Ofer Bergman and Steve Whittaker explain why we organize our personal digital data the way we do and how the design of new PIM systems can help us manage our collections more efficiently. Bergman and Whittaker report that many of us use hierarchical folders for our personal digital organizing. Critics of this method point out that information is hidden from sight in folders that are often within other folders so that we have to remember the exact location of information to access it. Because of this, information scientists suggest other methods: search, more flexible than navigating folders; tags, which allow multiple categorizations; and group information management. Yet Bergman and Whittaker have found in their pioneering PIM research that these other methods that work best for public information management don't work as well for personal information management. Bergman and Whittaker describe personal information collection as curation: we preserve and organize this data to ensure our future access to it. Unlike other information management fields, in PIM the same user organizes and retrieves the information. After explaining the cognitive and psychological reasons that so many prefer folders, Bergman and Whittaker propose the user-subjective approach to PIM, which does not replace folder hierarchies but exploits these unique characteristics of PIM.

The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist's Companion for the 21st Century

The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist's Companion for the 21st Century PDF Author: Richard Polt
Publisher: The Countryman Press
ISBN: 1581575874
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
The connoisseur's guide to the typewriter, entertaining and practical What do thousands of kids, makers, poets, artists, steampunks, hipsters, activists, and musicians have in common? They love typewriters—the magical, mechanical contraptions that are enjoying a surprising second life in the 21st century, striking a blow for self-reliance, privacy, and coherence against dependency, surveillance, and disintegration. The Typewriter Revolution documents the movement and provides practical advice on how to choose a typewriter, how to care for it, and what to do with it—from National Novel Writing Month to letter-writing socials, from type-ins to typewritten blogs, from custom-painted typewriters to typewriter tattoos. It celebrates the unique quality of everything typewriter, fully-illustrated with vintage photographs, postcards, manuals, and more.

Texture

Texture PDF Author: Richard Harper
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780262083744
Category : COMPUTERS
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Why we complain about communication overload even as we seek new ways to communicate.

Reclaiming Conversation

Reclaiming Conversation PDF Author: Sherry Turkle
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143109790
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
“In a time in which the ways we communicate and connect are constantly changing, and not always for the better, Sherry Turkle provides a much needed voice of caution and reason to help explain what the f*** is going on.” —Aziz Ansari, author of Modern Romance Renowned media scholar Sherry Turkle investigates how a flight from conversation undermines our relationships, creativity, and productivity—and why reclaiming face-to-face conversation can help us regain lost ground. We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection. Preeminent author and researcher Sherry Turkle has been studying digital culture for over thirty years. Long an enthusiast for its possibilities, here she investigates a troubling consequence: at work, at home, in politics, and in love, we find ways around conversation, tempted by the possibilities of a text or an email in which we don’t have to look, listen, or reveal ourselves. We develop a taste for what mere connection offers. The dinner table falls silent as children compete with phones for their parents’ attention. Friends learn strategies to keep conversations going when only a few people are looking up from their phones. At work, we retreat to our screens although it is conversation at the water cooler that increases not only productivity but commitment to work. Online, we only want to share opinions that our followers will agree with – a politics that shies away from the real conflicts and solutions of the public square. The case for conversation begins with the necessary conversations of solitude and self-reflection. They are endangered: these days, always connected, we see loneliness as a problem that technology should solve. Afraid of being alone, we rely on other people to give us a sense of ourselves, and our capacity for empathy and relationship suffers. We see the costs of the flight from conversation everywhere: conversation is the cornerstone for democracy and in business it is good for the bottom line. In the private sphere, it builds empathy, friendship, love, learning, and productivity. But there is good news: we are resilient. Conversation cures. Based on five years of research and interviews in homes, schools, and the workplace, Turkle argues that we have come to a better understanding of where our technology can and cannot take us and that the time is right to reclaim conversation. The most human—and humanizing—thing that we do. The virtues of person-to-person conversation are timeless, and our most basic technology, talk, responds to our modern challenges. We have everything we need to start, we have each other. Turkle's latest book, The Empathy Diaries (3/2/21) is available now.

Privacy on the Line

Privacy on the Line PDF Author: Whitfield Diffie
Publisher: Mit Press
ISBN: 9780262042406
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
A penetrating and insightful study of privacy and security in telecommunications for a post-9/11, post-Patriot Act world. Telecommunication has never been perfectly secure. The Cold War culture of recording devices in telephone receivers and bugged embassy offices has been succeeded by a post-9/11 world of NSA wiretaps and demands for data retention. Although the 1990s battle for individual and commercial freedom to use cryptography was won, growth in the use of cryptography has been slow. Meanwhile, regulations requiring that the computer and communication industries build spying into their systems for government convenience have increased rapidly. The application of the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act has expanded beyond the intent of Congress to apply to voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and other modern data services; attempts are being made to require ISPs to retain their data for years in case the government wants it; and data mining techniques developed for commercial marketing applications are being applied to widespread surveillance of the population. In Privacy on the Line, Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau strip away the hype surrounding the policy debate over privacy to examine the national security, law enforcement, commercial, and civil liberties issues. They discuss the social function of privacy, how it underlies a democratic society, and what happens when it is lost. This updated and expanded edition revises their original -- and prescient -- discussions of both policy and technology in light of recent controversies over NSA spying and other government threats to communications privacy.

Measuring Performance for Business Results

Measuring Performance for Business Results PDF Author: M. Zairi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401113025
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Financial measures have traditionally been the cornerstone of the perform ance measurement system. In recent years, there has been a shift from treating financial figures as the foundation for performance measurement to treating them as one among a broader set of potential financial measures. Changes in cost structures and the manufacturing and competi tive environment have been responsible for the change of emphasis. In today's worldwide competitive environment companies are compet ing in terms of product quality, delivery, reliability, after-sales service and customer satisfaction. None of these variables are measured by traditional financial measures, despite the fact that they represent the major goals of world-class manufacturing companies. By focusing mainly on financial variables there is a danger that the performance reporting system will motivate managers to focus exclusively on cost reduction and short-term profitability and ignore many of the critical factors that determine long-term business success. The key to success, in today's global economy, is total customer satisfaction. To achieve this, companies must develop performance measures that drive employees to control processes that satisfy customer expectations. In particular, performance measures should provide process-level information that motivates employees to achieve the responsiveness and flexibility that companies require to compete on a global basis. Responsiveness is achieved by building relationships that lead to satisfied customers, suppliers and employees. Flexibility is achieved by reducing output variation in proceSfes; for example, the reduction of lead times and delays are both necessary for sustained competitive excellence and long-term profitability.

Toward Paperless Information Systems

Toward Paperless Information Systems PDF Author: Frederick Wilfrid Lancaster
Publisher: New York : Academic Press
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Monograph forecasting computerization of information processing of scientific and technical information - reviews the trends in computerized information retrieval since 1963, deals with the evolution of electronic publishing and feasibility of electronic information systems, and discusses future paperless communication, the role of librarys in a paperless society, etc. Bibliography pp. 167 to 174, diagrams, graphs and statistical tables.