I recently stumbled onto this website, which highlights 21 things that became obsolete this decade. Among the list were PDA’s, video rental stores, public pay phones, VCRs, fax machines, CDs and paper. I think it is crazy to think that many upcoming generations will never come in contact with such things. I was astonished to find paper on the list, but in a way it makes sense considering my brother’s middle school has provided all of its students with iPads in an effort to move towards a more paperless environment. This surprised me because of the student’s ages. My high school provided all of its students with laptops, but even then, we often used paper seeing as students still preferred to write their notes on paper. When I was inquiring about how popular it is becoming for schools to provide mediums like iPads for their students, I came across this website which lists 5 mistakes schools make with iPads. While there clearly are pros and cons to using iPads in school, I am still left with mixed feelings. Environmentally, cutting back on paper is extremely beneficial but for my own selfish reasons, nothing quite compares to writing and reading on and off of tangible pages.
Nothing on that list was surprising, except when i read that paper had been made obsolete. That seems unthinkable, I use paper every single day to take notes and work. The fact that Business Insider believes paper to have been made obsolete is extremely surprising.
I am torn between whether paper becoming obsolete is a good thing or a bad thing. Although the “VAST 231” part of me that has learned so much about the importance of paper to an individual’s reading experience wants me to believe that it is a bad thing, the environmentalist part of me thinks otherwise. I know that using less paper would obviously be beneficial to the environment, and to be honest I think that refusing to sacrifice the overall quality of reading for the sake of the environment is rather selfish.
I do find it somewhat funny that practically everything on the list is made obsolete by smartphones and/or the internet. Out of all of them however, paper definitely stands out the most, especially since how useful it still is, despite this movement to a more advanced age. I believe that for its various uses, among other things, paper will continue to be used, even as we move forward. Even if the reason is simply because showing a digital autograph doesn’t seem nearly as cool as one on paper. And what else would we make paper airplanes from?