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  3. For office innovators, the unrealized dream of the "paperless" office is a classic example of high-tech hubris (傲慢). Today’s off

For office innovators, the unrealized dream of the "paperless" office is a classic example of high-tech hubris (傲慢). Today’s off

admin2019-06-17  3
问题     For office innovators, the unrealized dream of the "paperless" office is a classic example of high-tech hubris (傲慢). Today’s office drone is drowning in more paper than ever before.
    But after decades of hype, American offices may finally be losing their paper obsession. The demand for paper used to outstrip the growth of the US economy, but the past two or three years have seen a marked slowdown in sales—despite a healthy economic scene.
    Analysts attribute the decline to such factors as advances in digital databases and communication systems. Escaping our craving for paper, however, will be anything but an easy affair.
    "Old habits are hard to break," says Merilyn Dunn, a communications supplies director. "There are some functions that paper serves where a screen display doesn’t work. Those functions are both its strength and its weakness. "
    In the early to mid-1990s, a booming economy and improved desktop printers helped boost paper sales by 6 to 7 percent each year. The convenience of desktop printing allowed office workers to indulge in printing anything and everything at very little effort or cost.
    But now, the growth rate of paper sales in the United States is flattening by about half a percent each year. Ms. Dunn says plain white office paper will see less than a 4 percent growth rate, despite the strong overall economy. A primary reason for the change, says Dunn, is that for the first time ever, some 47 percent of the workforce entered the job market after computers had already been introduced to offices.
    "We’re finally seeing a reduction in the amount of paper being used per worker in the workplace," says John Maine, vice president of a pulp and paper economic consulting firm. "More information is being transmitted electronically, and more and more people are comfortable with the information residing only in electronic form without printing multiple backups. "
    In addition, Mr. Maine points to the lackluster employment market for white-collar workers—the primary driver of office paper consumption—for the shift in paper usage.
    The real paradigm shift may be in the way paper is used. Since the advent of advanced and reliable office-net work systems, data storage has moved away from paper archives. The secretarial art of "filing" is disappearing from job descriptions. Much of today’s data may never leave its original digital format.
    The changing attitudes toward paper have finally caught the attention of paper companies, says Richard Harper, a researcher at Microsoft. "All of a sudden, the paper industry has started thinking, ’We need to learn more about the behavioral aspects of paper use,’ * he says. "They had never asked, they’d just assumed that 70 million sheets would be bought per year as a literal function of economic growth. "
    To reduce paper use, some companies are working to combine digital and paper capabilities. For example, Xerox Corp. is developing electronic paper- thin digital displays that respond to a stylus, like a pen on paper. Notations can be erased or saved digitally.
    Another idea, intelligent paper, comes from Anoto Group. It would allow notations made with a stylus on a page printed with a special magnetic ink to simultaneously appear on a computer screen.
    Even with such technological advances, the improved capabilities of digital storage continue to act against "paperlessness," argues Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster. In his prophetic and metaphorical essay, "The Electronic Pinata (彩罐)," he suggests that the increasing amounts of electronic data necessarily require more paper.
    "The information industry today is like a huge electronic pinata, composed of a thin paper crust surrounding an electronic core," Mr. Saffo writes. The growing paper crust "is most noticeable, but the hidden electronic core that produces the crust is far larger—and growing more rapidly. The result is that we are becoming paperless, but we hardly notice at all. "
    In the same way that digital innovations have increased paper consumption, Saffo says, so has video-conferencing—with its promise of fewer in-person meetings—boosting business travel.
    "That’s one of the great ironies of the information age," Saffo says. "It’s just common sense that the more you talk to someone by phone or computer, it inevitably leads to a face-to-face meeting. The best thing for the aviation industry was the Internet. "
Which is the best title for this article?
选项 A、What ever happened to the paperless office?
B、The End of Paperless Office
C、The Future of Paperless Office
D、Will paperless office come into reality?
答案D
解析 主旨大意题。文章开头就说无纸化办公至今没有实现，相反办公用纸越来越多；接着叙述了纸张消耗的历史及影响纸张消耗的因素；最后提到，虽然目前人们为实现无纸办公做出了许多努力也取得了一些成就，但科技发展反而增加了用纸需求。由此推断，无纸化办公是否能真正实现尚且存疑。D项最能概括文意，故为答案。
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