Pulp Fact

From" 40's 50's 60's

"The office is the last corporate holdout to the automation tide that has swept through the factory and the accounting department. It has changed little since the invention of the typewriter 100 years ago. But in almost a matter of months, office automation has emerged as a full-blown systems approach that will revolutionize how offices work.[…]

     Will the office change all that much? Listen to George E. Pake, who heads Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto (Calif.) Research Center, a new think tank already having a significant impact on the copier giant's strategies for going after the office systems market: 'There is absolutely no question that there will be a revolution in the office over the next 20 years. What we are doing will change the office like the jet plane revolutionized travel and the way that TV has altered family life.'
     Pake says that in 1995 his office will be completely different; there will be a TV display terminal with keyboard sitting on his desk. 'I'll be able to call up documents from my files on the screen, or by pressing a button,' he says. I can get my mail or any messages. I don't know how much hard copy [printed paper] I'll want in this world.'"
— June 30, 1975, issue of BusinessWeek, via Bloomberg Business Week
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"Whatever happened to the 'paperless office?' Thirty years ago the rise of computers was hailed as the beginning of the paperless-office era. In a 1980 briefing in The Economist entitled 'Towards the paperless office,' we recommended that businesses trying to improve productivity should 'reduce the flow of paper, ultimately aiming to abolish it.' Since then, alas, global paper consumption has increased by half. The average American uses the paper equivalent of almost six 40-foot (12-metre) trees a year."
— The Economist online
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