ICT has taken over our offices

It is really amazing how far we have come to depend on modern information communications technology (ICT) in the office.

This was brought home recently when we were deprived of the Outlook Express system, which deals with the emails, due to the corruption of some original.

The result was that it disrupted the normal rhythm of the office, as instead of being able to send a one line or few pages of documents in a matter of seconds, by using the email, you had to think of using the telephone, sending a fax or even sending memos and letters by post.

On top of this you are denied access to books and materials via the internet, which become important as the office no longer has reference and text books in the same quantity as before.

The ICT revolution has made things so convenient that we have forgotten what life in the office was like only a generation ago.

The email is certainly more convenient to use for many cases where a telephone call takes too long, especially if you have to wait in a queue and then find that the person you want is either talking to someone else or not there.

In the circumstances the email serves a wonderful function and the message is there for the recipient as soon as they switch their PC on. Less than a quarter of a century ago letters had to be drafted on a piece of paper, which was given to the typist to type the letter for you

"The ICT revolution has made things so convenient that we have forgotten what life in the office was like only a generation ago."

If a mistake was made then it was corrected manually or the whole page had to be re-typed as the typewriters of the day had no memory.

Indeed it was a big advance when our office acquired "electric" typewriters, (as opposed to electronic) which could remember the previous line and thus corrections were possible on a small scale.

By the start of the 1980s we advanced to dictaphones and the typist moved on to word processing using the computer, which allowed for drafts to be saved and edited with considerable ease.

The computer can save all your letters and allow you access in a matter of seconds; the computer has thus become an essential tool in any office and even in the home, as it allows you to put things on "paper", as it were.

It took a valiant effort by the ICT department in our office to restore the email facility after a couple of days, which also proved another point that while the computer and all it offers is wonderful, it is also easy to lose information which then becomes difficult to reconstruct, unless you kept a hard copy

This then goes against the move to a "paperless" office, which most people seem to be in favour of, but not in agreement as to what ought to be retained as hard copy.

The move to a "paperless office" is inevitable, given not only the technological advances made over the last decade but because the price of a square foot of space in London is very high.

One can just imagine the rent for storage space, essentially for files which are unlikely to be needed again.

As a nation we seem to produce a lot of waste paper, which may not be an ecologically sound move as it not only requires acres of trees as raw material but it needs a lot of water and electricity and other harmful chemicals which are needed to produce a ton of paper.

We are inundated with junk mail from all sides and as a result our newly provided paper bin is full to the brim well before the collection time each fortnight.

I am sure we can devise some sort of system to reduce the production of so much waste paper and packaging, which seem to cost an arm and a leg to have disposed of properly.

10:34 Monday 7th April 2003

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