A Paperless World

When the internet first arrived at my parents' house 13 or 14 years ago, via an AOL subscription on a painfully slow dial-up connection, a lot of folks were looking expectantly toward a "paperless" future. The computer, and its fancy novelty tricks like "e-mail," was going to totally eliminate our reliance on printed anything. The rainforests were saved, and the future had arrived. Hallelujah.

My father, who for his keen insight will probably show up a lot on this blog, has often observed that instead of eliminating our need for paper, the computer has exponentially increased our ability to produce printed work. A click of a button instantly sends our spaceless, digital copies of War and Peace to the printer. We just can't get enough of the stuff, rainforests and Al Gore be damned.

Of course the nostalgic among us are happy that paper is sticking around, at least for now. There is, we're fond of saying, simply something different about holding a book or magazine--something different, and something pleasant that we're not about to give up. This is the peace of a piece of paper.

And yet it is convenience, and not nostalgia, which most often drives us; you're reading this discussion about paper online, for instance, and not in print. As a celebration of irony, then, this paperless blog will be devoted to the pieces of paper, significant and laughably insignificant, which pass through my hands on a daily basis. This project is a challenge which I am issuing to myself: to render something interesting out of something which is wholly mundane. If I had broad and important philosophical points to make, I would make them. And if my nostalgia for the printed word were compelling enough to make a case against e-literacy, I would make it. Since I don't and it isn't, I will try only to entertain in an everyday, post-Seinfeld, isn't that something kind of way.

Here's hoping.