Paper’s Use Thriving in Age of the Computer

SAN DIEGO — Paper is alive and well in the computer age, an era that began with predictions that paper would go the way of the dinosaurs.

Instead of extinction, paper has enjoyed a renaissance as computers proliferated in industry, education and government.

Three years ago, General Dynamics officials computerized their mailing system with the idea of increasing efficiency and reducing paper work.

Messages are now sent via computer to General Dynamics offices throughout the world.

More efficient? Yes, company officials say.

Less paper work? No way.

Paper Consumption Up

“We’re moving 100,000 pounds of paper mail per month in San Diego,” says Jim Martin, who heads the electronic mailing system for General Dynamics’ plants in the San Diego. “Overall, the amount of paper this company consumes has increased.”

Paper is thriving, rather than disappearing because of computers.

“It’s incredible,” said Gail Boyle, president of the San Diego Teachers Assn. “I have a computer, and I pump out more paper. Sometimes, I wonder if there’s going to be a tree left.”

The computers themselves are contributing to paper mania.

Consumption of computer paper had an annual compounded growth rate of 8.4% in the 1970s, from 960,000 tons in 1970 to 2.2 million tons in 1980, said Peter Dunckel, a marketing manager for Crown Zellerbach Corp., a San Francisco paper manufacturer.

Americans bought 24 billion pages of copy machine paper in 1970. By 1980, the figure had ballooned to 172 billion, a 21.8% compounded annual growth rate, Dunckel said.

Sales of envelope paper increased at a lesser rate, 2.9% a year over the last decade, he said.

Printed Information Cheaper

“Rather than diminishing the amount of printed information, computers make it more palatable and cheaper,” said Paul Strassmann, a Connecticut information systems consultant who has spoken on the myth of paperless offices.

“In this universe,” he said, “anytime you make something more convenient, more useful and cheaper to boot, people are going to use more of it.”

At General Dynamics, the amount of paper mail circulating in San Diego has more than doubled in two years, from 50,000 pounds per month in 1982 to 112,000 in 1984, a spokeswoman said. Some of that, she said, was due to an increase in General Dynamics labor force in San Diego. But paper mail was supposed to decrease under the company’s electronic mail system, she said.

“The advent of the computer era in the 1970s produced almost the opposite result of what was forecast,” said Robert Bacon, president of Bacon’s Publicity Checker, a national listing of periodicals.

“Instead of a paperless society, the amount of information distributed on paper has increased significantly and is continuing to grow,” he said.

Related to Habits

Paper’s staying power has a lot to do with peoples’ habits and their feeling that reading from paper is more comfortable than reading from a computer screen.

“It’s more comfortable for us to read a long report on paper,” said Alan Purchase, a management consultant for Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park. “It’s easier for us to scan through a newspaper or business report than to scan an electronic form.”

Even in bowling, where computerized scoring is replacing paper score pads, paper is still used. After the computer has scored the game, the bowler can print out the result on paper.

Paper and computers should coexist for years to come, Purchase said.

“A paperless society is way into the next century, at the least,” Purchase said.