Paper.

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

When I am at work I like to scribble notes and diagrams down on my notepad... I also like to have multiple reports and pages in front of me to work from...
Paper is also easier to read off!

When I am leading a squad through a forest at night on a covert mission, I do not want to have my mission planning on a bright beacon that draws the enemy's attention!

iPads are not secure to take into areas which process confidential or above information...

(i hope to god that the OP was a joke! :S)

 

[loa]

Paper is much, much easier to read on than displays, especially in sunlight.
E-readers (with e-ink displays. Not that i-pad shit) are getting there but can't quite compare to real paper just yet.
Also books are a lot less fragile than e-readers and drawing on paper is still not matched by anything digital just yet in terms of precision and speed.

 

[omega 616]

Not everyone in the world can afford an iPad, computer, or similar. So yeah, paper is still viable. I think it will be for a very long time to come. Like mentioned above, while paper can be burned, and if it gets wet it's probably in trouble, but apart from that there's really not much that it's susceptible to. Technological devices can be wiped out easily by EMPs, hacked, battery fails, they break easily, people find them strenuous to use after long periods of time, and not everyone in the world is accustomed to using them yet. For the older generation its much more familiar and practical to use paper.

Here is a section from the OP ... "So, when do you think we will stop using paper and having hard copies of stuff?"

I assume you and a lot of other people are thinking I am talking about tomorrow or in 10 years, I am thinking like 2100 times.

 

[Henriot]

Well... In my personal experience, writing on paper in a photographic darkroom creates no light whereas writing on an iPad generally makes it light up, which ruins prints.

But I'm passionate about analogue technologies, so my bias will always shine through with these arguments. Despite the fact that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies to such everyday concepts, change is always slow when it comes to a global or even national level. On top of that, people will always place a value on the "old tech" because it's nostalgic and most of the time the process that they made things meant they were intended to last.

 

[omega 616]

When I am at work I like to scribble notes and diagrams down on my notepad... I also like to have multiple reports and pages in front of me to work from...
Paper is also easier to read off!

When I am leading a squad through a forest at night on a covert mission, I do not want to have my mission planning on a bright beacon that draws the enemy's attention!

iPads are not secure to take into areas which process confidential or above information...

(i hope to god that the OP was a joke! :S)

Again, what is making people think I mean "we should wake up tomorrow and rid ourselves of paper"? I am talking long off into the future, here is a quote from the OP (which I don't think a single person has answered yet) "So, when do you think we will stop using paper and having hard copies of stuff?".

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

When I am at work I like to scribble notes and diagrams down on my notepad... I also like to have multiple reports and pages in front of me to work from...
Paper is also easier to read off!

When I am leading a squad through a forest at night on a covert mission, I do not want to have my mission planning on a bright beacon that draws the enemy's attention!

iPads are not secure to take into areas which process confidential or above information...

(i hope to god that the OP was a joke! :S)

Again, what is making people think I mean "we should wake up tomorrow and rid ourselves of paper"? I am talking long off into the future, here is a quote from the OP (which I don't think a single person has answered yet) "So, when do you think we will stop using paper and having hard copies of stuff?".

Ok, in response to that question... never! We will never swap paper for electronics...
Paper is a lot more useful than e-versions in most scenarios... most places that paper is less useful it has already been phased out... like whrn you get an order, you sign on a devuce now etc...
Some placed tried it, but then went back to paper because they didn't like it, like football referees!

Can you ever imagine a time when Amazon sends a damn iPad with your receipt for your good in your parcel!? Nope, that is why it will not replace paper!

 

[omega 616]

When I am at work I like to scribble notes and diagrams down on my notepad... I also like to have multiple reports and pages in front of me to work from...
Paper is also easier to read off!

When I am leading a squad through a forest at night on a covert mission, I do not want to have my mission planning on a bright beacon that draws the enemy's attention!

iPads are not secure to take into areas which process confidential or above information...

(i hope to god that the OP was a joke! :S)

Again, what is making people think I mean "we should wake up tomorrow and rid ourselves of paper"? I am talking long off into the future, here is a quote from the OP (which I don't think a single person has answered yet) "So, when do you think we will stop using paper and having hard copies of stuff?".

Ok, in response to that question... never! We will never swap paper for electronics...
Paper is a lot more useful than e-versions in most scenarios... most places that paper is less useful it has already been phased out... like whrn you get an order, you sign on a devuce now etc...
Some placed tried it, but then went back to paper because they didn't like it, like football referees!

Can you ever imagine a time when Amazon sends a damn iPad with your receipt for your good in your parcel!? Nope, that is why it will not replace paper!

While I have never bought an item off amazon, I have bought stuff off the net. They always send an EMAIL with the receipt in it, for example: my living room TV was bought off the internet and I still have the receipt saved on my computer from 2 years ago.

 

[J-dog42]

I have been thinking lately that in the technology age, why are we still using paper?

Because books don't brick themselves like my kindle just did. Bloody pain in the backside.

 

[Keymik]

I haven't read all the posts so I don't know if this point has been made yet but here goes.

It's safer. If your computer suddenly decides to destroy all of your harddrive(Like mine did some weeks ago) all your fancy digital data will be lost. Completely. Where if you have it on paper you can store it safely at home or other safe locations.
I'm not saying that digital documents are bad, but both paper and digital have their advantages and disadvantages.
And I sure as hell wouldn't want to get rid of paper books, I hate the touch screen reading and very much prefer paper.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

Snip

Amazin send an invoice via email, but alawys send something paper copy... in fact eveywhere I have ever shopped online send a paper copy... it's just how it's done... so you can file it, or have the copy if you want to return it...

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Several reasons:

1. Old people will have to die. And it will be dying, this isn't something that will be solved just by slowly phasing it out. As long as even a few people from about I would guess 40+ (today) are still alive paper will continue to be used. Maybe even it will take a full 100 years until every last vestige of the nostalgic generation is dead.

2. It will take a world wide shift. Some places don't have the technology to keep things on electronic copies, so they use paper. Once electronic filing is available for every single person in every single country, and they have all accepted as a culture to use it and nothing else, then we can get rid of paper.

3. It still needs to be more reliable. When you have a physical copy it is physical. It can be locked away safely in a vault somewhere and never gone near, and the only way it could be destroyed is if someone went physically to the place where it was and destroyed it. Even for things that aren't very well protected, you still have to be in physical contact with them to destroy them.

With a digital system, it's still not so secure. The more things are connected by networking technology and digital copies the easier it becomes to destroy them. To have something totally secure in the digital age it needs to be on a computer that isn't connected to any other machines through any other network, but the whole point of such technology is to make the sharing of such information easier.

And if the easiest way to keep classified files totally safe is to only have one hardcopy, then there will always be a use for paper.

 

[squidface]

snip

Ok my bad! I still think it's hard to project that kind of thing. 2100 is 88 years away. 88 years is a long time - we've come a long way since 1924. Plus technology and society keeps making leaps and bounds in less and less time. Even still, something majorly awful could occur in the next 88 years like... running out of a particular resource or something.
So yeah like I said I think it's difficult to project how much technology will progress in the time between now and then. But I like to think that we'll still be using paper. We've used it since Egyptian Papyrus times and maybe even before that (not so clued up on my paper history).