The Paperless Society

When I was at school no one had heard or dreamt of computers! Whilst I was at University the large Mainframe computer was born! They were massive, were housed in enormous rooms with carefully controlled atmosphere, operators wore lab coats to use them and the sensitive were known to faint in the awesome presence of these mammoths!!

My thesis all those years ago was laboriously written longhand on the huge folded sheets of paper that were the by product of these machines and then it was equally laboriously typed on a typewriter by a young lass in Sheffield who earnt useful pin money that way! And heaven help me if I wanted to change anything later.

And at the end of my sojourn in that splendid city, all my wordly possessions fitted in one trunk taken home for me by British Road Services. Sound familiar to anyone?

Then the desk top computer came along. 'Ah yes' said those who knew about these things. These will signal the beginnings of the paperless office, the saving of millions of trees, the beginning of a truly new era of ultra tidyness in the work place!! Ha ha! I now look around me in my study and am drowning in paper! Loose bits of paper, cuttings, scribbled ideas to pick up on later, newspaper cuttings, post pending a reply, books, magazines I'll read one day, etc etc etc. Is it just me? Are all you others so well disciplined, backed up, tidy people that you do not have this problem? How do I keep it in check?

Tips please before I go quietly mad under the sheer volume and untidyness of it all!