Nearly Paperless, but Much Smarter

Peter Cochrane discusses his journey from early proponent of paperless, to a wholesale adopter of AI

Thirty-five years ago I made the (then) bold decision to go paperless. I mandated eMail and electronic documentation throughout my department, and progressively removed copiers and printers. A filing cabinet and cupboards space of 50 per cent soon followed.

As page time paper consumption decreased and working lives, operations, efficiency and productivity all improved. But what I didn't reckon for was just how long this laborious process would be! So after some 15 years in industry and 20 years in my own company how am I doing? I'm pleased we are down from six filing cabinets and a cupboard to no cabinets and just one pull-out cupboard drawer.

What a journey! I never envisaged it taking so long. All I can say is it wasn't me, it was everybody else! Surprisingly many orgatisations continued with paper to the extent that they printed out emails, or at a secretary printed them to be annotated with a pen. This laggardly cohort persisted for over a decade, and so did the practice of keeping paper copies of all emails and electronic communication.

I'm pleased to say that in 2020 not only have people stopped sending letters they've also stop sending cheques - hoorah, no more trips to the bank either. However, as they say in the movies: "It over till the fat lady sings" - and she certainly isn't in full voice yet!

Like a lot of tech-driven change it seems we have to wait for a generation die off, but it seems we are almost there! This past week saw me shredding and burning the residue of time limited paper documents charting past business.

On the plus side; I would say that 35 years has seen productivity go up by 10 - 100 fold in most areas thanks to a combination of email, electronic documents, social media and a range of apps. But it is still taking a while for people to really understand that:

"A picture is worth 1000 words"

"A moving picture is worth 1 million

"And an immersive VR experience is worth a billion"

I'm now encouraging students to adopt a brutal auditing of their written work and the subsumption of more graphical approach. Very often I use the prophetic words: "remember you are actually wearing out the eyesight of the person who is reading your document." I do wish older generations would also adopt this mantra.

I recently edited a multi-author a book where the worst chapter of 85 pages did not contain a single diagram or picture. Worse, it was written in the academic third-party boring, non-committal mode. It was hard work. In contrast the best chapter was full of pictures to tell an ‘engineering story' complete with creative provocation and challenge throughout.

As an new academic I am now trying to capture the needs and imaginations of young minds and can't see that happening with the old invective modes.

This journey has been long, torturous yet interesting, and I have great hopes for future generations and new their ways of thinking and working. I can only imagine what they may do and achieve with a raft of new tools in their possession and being developed.

My continuing journey now includes AI on all my machines, devices, office and every room in my home, augmented by ever more apps, modelling and animation tools. This started 25 years ago with crude AI prototypes, but now I talk to machines and get them to do searches, analysis and typing, but every now and again I ask my laptop:

"I hope you will be proud of me before I die"

I'm still waiting for the reply!

Peter Cochrane, Prof of Sentient Systems at The University of Suffolk, UK