Will paper die when the digital age hits?

The development of science and technology brings more and more obvious paperless trend, the author discusses whether this trend will lead to the demise of paper by personal experience.

TechCrunch author Ryan Laure (Ryan Lawler) analyzes the pros and cons of the paperless trend from his own experience. He has also written articles on business, technology and Telecommunications for New York and San Francisco Publications, and has studied these areas.

A few weeks ago, I watched a movie with a Passbook bill, the first time I did it. The whole process was very smooth, I opened the passbook to the ticket inspector to see. Ticket test is valid, I went in!

The theater experience is just one example of a digital tool that replaces paper or print bills. I started using a mobile boarding pass instead of printing a paper boarding pass at the airport. I paid with square wallet so that the merchant wouldn't have to print a ticket for me to sign. I pay rent, cable TV, telephone and all other utilities online. In the 2 years I moved into my apartment, I had 24 checks in total, one per month.

These actions are becoming involuntary, but it highlights the fundamental shift we have experienced in E-commerce and information exchange.

Most of these examples are about how the Internet and mobile payments change our spending and business habits, but that's not all of my digital life. I haven't bought any paper books for a long time, instead of buying and reading books on the ipad. In addition, I write for a publication that is published online only, and I also read other publications on the Internet. As a matter of fact, I can't remember the last time my finger was stained by the newspaper Ink.

Many people argue that this is not a good thing, claiming that owning physical objects such as books and photographs has many advantages. In a world filled with Instagram photos, people can only see photos of their friends on the Internet. Sincerely is one of my favorite start-ups, and it makes it easy for people to print their digital photos and distribute them to others.

However, from an environmental point of view, to print newspapers, receipts or boarding passes, we have to destroy millions of square miles of forest. These bills are valid only for a specified period of time, and most are eventually thrown into the dustbin.

But here's a bigger question: if all this information is digitized, what will the world look like? Not only will paper books and materials be digitized, but information on semi-permanent entity media, such as tapes, CDs and CDs, will also be digitized online.

Our knowledge of the past stems from the documents that are left to us, which may be tablets, cuneiform, or paper. Modern culture is slowly stifling this way of information transmission. If the entity book disappears in the next 20 years, how do people know about us after 220 years? Digital storage is likely to expire.

I have been thinking about these things for the past few years, but paperless has just begun and seems to be becoming a reality. When a nuclear disaster strikes, can the digital information recorded on the disk be preserved? Will the evidence of our thoughts and culture be classified as dust?