The Future of Documents

Even better than Erasable Paper (aka Transient Paper) would be Programmable Erasable Paper, Paper that can be programmed to self-erase after a certain period of time!

That is the promise of a new technology developed by Northwestern University. A team of researchers is leveraging the unique property of certain nanoparticles – their ability to change color based on how close they are to one another - by coating them with certain molecules (MUA, also known as aka 4-(11-mercaptoundecanoxy)azobenzene by some but not me :-)), so that they change position under UV light.

The printing process is similar to Transient Paper – beam UV light to print an image. This new technology, once well mastered, should allow the disappearance of the ink to be more “programmable” – by changing the amount of MUA coating, that speed will vary (whereas Transient Paper is a standard 16-24 hours). These nanoparticles should also provide more color options (although probably limited to shades of purple, blue and red based on this New Scientist Article).

Right now it does not have the look and feel of Real or Transient Paper (two sheets of plastic with gel in between) and the “program” speed depends, just like Transient Paper, on external conditions such as lighting and temperature. However, this is very promising technology as a replacement for paper, that could bring us one step closer to the “Less Paper Office” a and a sustainable use of paper.

I blogged about this a year or so back, but thanks to Deepak for pointing it out: the Codex Sinaiticus (’Sinai Book’), the world’s oldest Christian Bible, and one of the most important books in the world, is finally online.

This book marked the transition between papyrus-based codices and parchment-based codices, and was written in the 4th Century. It is also the oldest substantial book to survive antiquity.

The actual documents are housed in four separate institutions across the world:  the British Library, University Library in Leipzig, National Library in St Petersburg, and Saint Catherine’s Monastery. Internet technologies make the pages available in a nice, Web 2.0 User Interface. Worth checking out!

To better contemplate the transformations that the document has undergone, it is sometimes good to look back at the past of the documents.

That’s one wat of looking at the United Nations’ World Digital Library. It showcases “documents” such as rock paintings, parchments, manuscripts or other extremely interesting pieces of the human history – this with a cool navigation User Interface.

The material is drawn from around 30 libraries and archives from around the world, and dates back to up to 8,000 BC. It should expand later to non-Western items in the future – 380 from the 1170 current items being from Europe. Interestingly enough, these documents are still covered by the copyright law that applies in their country – the longest copyright period ever !

Business Week has a very interesting article on the benefits of less paper, or even paperless, in the Health Industry. Kaiser Permanente is cited as a role model for removing paper out of their offices, and moving towards eHealth records.

Interestingly enough, cost is not necessarily the main driver, as they admit that “there is unknown, if any, cost savings benefits”. However, other benefits accrue through improved productivity, and less redundant operations because of informaiton retained in paper records. However, at the end of the day, these will translate into cost savings anyway, as well as a more environmental-friendly behaviour. Not to mention improved quality of service – invaluable to the patient, with more up-to-date information.

Unfortunately, those players that have to make the biggest investments (small practices of doctors) are not the ones that reap most of those benefits – most typically the patient, hospital, health plan, and pharmacists. The up-front cost of establishing a eHealth record for small practices is still quite prohibitive, and the disruption in their work processes is quite significant at first. Only 4% of physicians have a comprehensive system in place, and another 13% use basic electronic system.

Even doctors in hospitals have a steep learning curve – only capable to receive half their normal patient load for the first two weeks, because of disruptions due to the electronic system . But this gets back to normal after a few weeks, usually.

The Health industry, like many others, can really benefit from a Less Paper strategy -  also productivity improvements, quality of service, and many other benefits – which eventually turn into significant cost reductions. This is usually best achieved by getting help from an expert – capable of re-engineering your business processes, and minimizing disruption.

Are you drowning in paper documents? Want to go paperless, or at least “less paper”, and move all of these documents into the electronic world? But you want to make sure these documents are safely stored on a central ECM system with all of its benefits: indexing, metadata, backed up, and securely accessible 24hrs a day?

Docushare Virtual Filing Cabinet can help you. This new offering combines archival software, a high-speed scanner, and a new Docushare 6.5 version. But, probably even more important, it includes some consulting to help you get started, analyse your existing file cabinet organization, and set up your electronic system.

Besides the easy and secure access and distribution, this sort of technology helps you go green, save on costs, and claim storage space back.

Sounds interesting? For more information, check this short video out by clicking the image below.

The document is evolving from a static, confidential container information to a social, shared and tagged device. Web 2.0 is paving the way to the “Future of Documents”.

I am currently following a great training by Sharon Crost on how to cross-fertilize the various media which constitute Web 2.0 and how to make your interactive marketing much more powerful through Web 2.0. Definitely worth it, if you get a chance.

In doing that, I am trying to see beyond the obvious ways to improve my blog audience and content, and to draw parallels with the “document” as we know it – how do you cross-fertilize documents and sources of information to make your customer documents more focused and more impactful? How do you differentiate your documents from others, so that customers drowning in Information Overload pick your documents over others? How do you make your documents “viral”?

These are a few things I’ll try to reflect upon over the next few weeks – although my blogging might be a bit disrupted by my XPLOR participation.

Autonomy announced last week that it will acquire Interwoven for 775 M$ in cash.

Very promising synergy between a company providing state-of-the art document and content understanding technologies, and a leader in Electronic Content Management (ECM). This will allow more automatic tagging and content analysis of your documents, directly as they enter your ECM system. Furthermore, this is a very good way for Autonomy to reinforce its position into the exploding eDiscovery space.

This is a synergy that only a few companies can provide today. Xerox very well positioned for this,  with its Litigation Services branch, its Docushare ECM solution, possibly combined in the future with some of its unique “meaning extraction” technologies such as Factspotter.

Well, maybe not quite 2009, but things are moving.

On the one hand, A few more details on Plastic Logic’s much anticipated e-Reader can be found in this video. It will support most office documents, subscription content, and advertising, with a form factor and a price which should make competitive against current players and “ready for mass adoption”. Unfortunately, its launch is now delayed to early 2010.

On the other hand though, Prime View International (PVI) announced that it would start mass production of flexible electrophotoretic displays (EPDs) in the second quarter of this year, and color EPDs by the end of the year. To be confirmed…

As we getting ready for the Less Paper office, it is important to “know the enemy” – paper.

The Environmental Paper Network has a very good report on Paper and the state of its industry: types of paper, all about recycling, cleaner production and responsible fiber sourcing.

By reading this very interesting document, you’ll discover that over 40% of the industrial wood pulp goes into paper production (growing), paper production is among the top toxic releasing industries, or how printing and writing paper is being used, or what difference a recycled paper makes from a virgin paper.

An avalanche of very interesting facts – definitely worth reading. But please, do not print the 77 pages, even though it makes it much easier to read

The Web Document is becoming mainstream. The number of unique scribd visitors tripled between January and December 2008 - culminating at 23 million unique visitors in November 2008. This makes scribd pop up at rank 16 in ComScore’s top 20 social media sites. Although 10 times less than blogger.com or Facebook, this is still quite an impressive achievement. Competing services such as Docstoc or Issuu attract significantly less visitors, but are still growing.

It is a snowball effect – as more users contribute content, the service becomes much more relevant to everyone and easier to find. I was pleasantly surprised, recently, to see quite scribd documents come up among the top results for my Google searches.

This confirms an emerging trend in the Future of Documents: the social, web document is becoming a significant alternative to paper. Many alternatives are required in Document 2.0 to move towards the Less Paper Office while covering all possible use case scenarios for the document. The web document is one of them, and is becoming a very credible alternative for sharing documents in a view-only, easy to share format, complementary to virtual desktops or online office document applications.