Broadband and Paperless Office

This excerpt was posted on Verizon's Blog by Link Hoewing

The Economist has a fascinating article that suggests that the “paperless office”, long touted as outgrowth of the move to digital and networked technologies, is “no longer a joke” and “getting closer.” This is another example of how technologies evolve and how businesses and consumers adapt to and rework technologies over time.

There is an old saying with regard to technology that “We tend to overestimate the short-term impact of technological change and underestimate its long-term impact “. This nostrum is attributed to Roy Amara, a researcher who was at the Institute for the Future who noted that technologies often tend to burst onto the scene with lots of promise and attention and then just as often seem to fade into nothingness, only to reemerge much later with more power than ever before. Why does this happen? Read more here....

Link has made this point before in his blog posts but I do believe we are rapidly approaching an inflection point where broadband can help us address these issues as a society through widespread adoption and better use of broadband and ICT technologies. The trends with regard to the “paperless office” give me even more hope that the future of broadband is bright.



In the future everyone could have the option of getting their broadband at up to 100Mb per second.