Robert Fisher wrote:
But why should we use ICT to replicate
paper? It is replacing it, for sure,
It depends on how you look at this.
True.
The proportion of paper to electronic documents is decreasing but the amount
of pages printed is still souring in the information age.
I heard it was exacerbated - lots of new print areas like manuals, email
growth, ..
When I started with Xerox 20 years ago there was talk of the paperless office
but no longer.
Yes, it'll be the last bastion - business - until digital signing
(ever?) replaces ink on contract etc.
But the potential is there, which should start at home (imho). That is,
who needs colour circulars thru the letterbox? When we want to shop for
specials we could get them listed off the net. This suggests taking a
lead against "push technology" pushers, like letterbox channel.
Information overload is everyone's problem, especially once it hits the
landfill (yellow ink is cadmium). ICT is the solution - Internet info
"pull technology" is the way we have to go. There are so many beneficial
follow-ons from beginning to resolve "waste" in society. The print
industry would feel threatened, but happily adapt to the new environment.
So my point was, in creating an online example..
Lesson One that I got in web design training (which was brief - I
baulked at frames & have yet to regret it), was metaphor. That is,
effective sites are so because they have a recogniseable metaphor -
identity, function, 'the way it works'.. Some are truly innovative, &
tabbed content pages were new back then, as an e.g. (before drop-down
menus). The majority of news/info sites stick to the metaphor of
digitised paper (e.g. esp. TLDP, HOWTOs, Debian, etc). I don't like
staring at bright pages like that because (they burn my eyes and), I
believe, the metaphor isn't the best use of ICT - largely it's the
landscape frame being wrong for an A4 portrait. So I am experimenting
with a metaphor that may prove better suited to ICT - nurturing the
console environment - a merger of *nix man(ual) & html.
I do believe a (much more) paperless NZ is on the way, after full
network reliability. But as this stage is probably predicated upon a
nuclear power plant somewhere north of Auckland, there will be a wait.
Cheers Rob,
Rik
--
Richard Tindall, InfoHelp Services <http://www.infohelp.co.nz>, on:
Ubuntu GNU/Linux 5.04 free OS, 2.6.10-5-k7 kernel, GNOME 2.10.0 desktop
OpenOffice.org 1.1.3, Mozilla 1.7.6 email client & web browser + Firefox
GIMP 2.2.2 graphics, gedit 2.10.2 web-dev-evn, gFTP 2.0.18 file transfer
