'The paperless office is as useful as the paperless office', so goes the saying. Since computers have become ubiquitous, paper consumption has actually increased.

It always amazes me that banks and credit card companies have to store vast amounts of paper copies of transactions, that there is still no low cost EDI network and people still send paper invoices and purchase orders and that paper exists at all for anything other than luxury items such as books. Paper documents are often an inefficient, costly, dangerous anachronism and yet the pace of their replacement is business is seemingly glacial.

Take architecture. The vast majority of litigation in architecture (and there is a vast amount of litigation - buildings are complicated and often leak etc.) stems from inconsistencies between contract documents. In the UK there are three principal documents, the plans themselves, the specifications and the bills of quantities. CAD software was supposed to change all of that, since one electronic document could contain all the contract information. Like many things in computing this goal is from fruition, as this latest initiative by Autodesk highlights.

AutoCAD revamp aims to cut out paper | CNET News.com