The paperless office is finally starting to become a reality.

That’s interesting, though not too surprising. It takes a long time for habits to change, and sometimes you just have to wait for old generations to retire and allow new ones to take their place.

Like many things, it just takes the oldsters retiring and/or dying for processes and approaches to improve. Not that everyone old is hidebound, but one has to admit that it is a tendency. Mostly gone are the days of an executive having his or her assistant print out emails to read.

At a previous job, there were people who for some reason would print out documents and hand them to me. I would always say, “Ah, no! Don’t hand me yet more paper, please. Put it out on the share.”

What am I going to do with a piece of paper? I can’t search it. Can’t get it to anyone else easily. Can’t look at it on a tablet or another device when I’m outside of the office, and have to keep track of it and even file it if it’s important.

About tablets, that’s the one area in the workplace where they can have some use: as a supplementary device one can use to view documents in meetings or at client sites, or for taking orders, etc.

Not coincidentally, this is how tablets are already being used by many businesses.