Humility is the best policy for technological forecasters.If you doubt that, remember those confident predictions of 30 years ago about the coming arrival of the “paperless office.”The arrival of computers everywhere in the workplace would,we were assured, soon make paper a thing of the past.Bill Gates vision of a computer on every desk has been more or less realized.Yet most of the folks working at those desks are knee-deep in paper.Research suggests our increasing use of paper is due to the...

Humility is the best policy for technological forecasters.If you doubt that, remember those confident predictions of 30 years ago about the coming arrival of the “paperless office.”The arrival of computers everywhere in the workplace would,we were assured, soon make paper a thing of the past.Bill Gates vision of a computer on every desk has been more or less realized.Yet most of the folks working at those desks are knee-deep in paper.Research suggests our increasing use of paper is due to the...