By Suzann Dodd, Contributor
AN 'ADVISOR' at a Ministry proclaimed we had moved into the 'paperless' office. I was provoked to warn that to do so is to move into the 'workless' office when, not if, the computers crashed.
Our power supply isn't dependable and our technology is flawed. An organisation which relies exclusively on computers in such an environment is going to get hurt. Everyone has a story about blackouts taking substantial work out with them. About documents beyond retrieval on dead systems. Everyone recalls how when they first 'went computer' productivity hit an all-time low.
Although it's convenient and quick to keep records in a database it is wise to have hardcopies. Most banks run off a hard copy at the close of each business day, just in case. Wise lawyers have hard copies of every document sent, and the wisest business people have fall backs when electricity goes.
The latest realm of cybervoid is the PDA. Everyone and his dog is buying a cute little personal digital assistant into which they download their lives. Phone numbers and appointment dates are the tip of lost data.
A friend of mine tells the tale of the button on his shirt pocket giving way and the PDA meeting concrete. For loss of a thread, a button was lost, for loss of a button, one's 'kingdom'; as his life organiser lay defenestrated on the ground, he was heard to cry; "Whatever happened to pencil and paper?"
Let me be the voice crying out in wilderness;
Never trust electronics.
Whatever it is, keep hard copies. Write your phone numbers and dates in some book. Run hardcopies of whatever is important to you.
It is often easier to find a hard copy than a cyber copy as many people haven't ever thought about how they store data.
Putting everything on a Harddrive is pretty stupid. First, it is not easy to find. Sure, you made a directory so that the stuff isn't flopping about in the C:\ drive, but even so, the number of subdirectories you would need to make and the method of saving: C:\data\letters\2002\January\ is beyond the ken of the average pseudo secretary cum data entry clerk. Little floppies, as volatile as they are, often prove far easier to categorise; 'January 2002 Letters', which is filed after December 2001 and before February 2002, meaning one has to take up the floppy, put it into the A drive and start scanning.
Of course, yanking open a file cabinet and finding the named file to which the letter belongs takes about 60 per cent less time.
I caution you, though it looks real efficient to whip out your PDA and punch, having a fallback will catch you, for you will fall.
Suzann Dodd is a writer and an attorney
