Paper records can last for hundreds of years without the support of any expensive infrastructure. I wouldn't bet on things that are stored on s3 being available hundreds of years from now.
Some of paper lasted for hundreds of years. How much of information didn't survive during that time period?
Information on s3 might not last for hundreds of years, but AFAIK the Voyager satellite didn't ship the information about our specie on paper.
Whereas, the older tech that lasted so long used simple components on older, process nodes with careful engineering practices. The better ones were also extremely costly with Voyager being a good example at $800+ million.
But we're just dealing with simple physical facts about paper here. All you need is a safe place to store it. S3 doesn't run without constant and costly maintenance.
Only once you have an idea what you want to represent, and how you want to represent it, do software tools that rigidly enforce that systematization of your written data become helpful instead of hindrances. I have dozens of different pieces of software for composition, to store data into hundreds of formats, none of which I'm wholly satisfied with.
With paper I know when I run into the limitations of paper, they are either my personal limitations and/or the bounds of what humans have figured out how to do. In software, I can see the design decisions standing between me and what I'd really like to be able to do. I can't move my pen and just do it anyway, I'd have to waste years of my life creating a competing software package.
Even though my overall choice is still to be all digital, I have to face the downsides of that trade-off every goddamn day.
Maybe have a Microsoft surface or another tablet with a stylus for when you want to "have that paper feel"
This is why I'm hoping for a surface phone this MWC. Then I could use Full OneNote, outlook, excel etc instead of the current cut down apps.
> due to the replication problem and accessibility the information on it is not durable (at least not as durable as s3)
We have documents that are thousands of years old, and digital archiving is far from a solved problem. Still, I think going back to paper is insane and this is a total puff piece about people longing for olden days. I'll add one significant item to your list: search! If I had to go back to flipping through endless pages of notebooks to find that one margin entry I made during a customer meeting about some edge case requirement I'd go mad.
A durable storage may be less prone to use data due to say, a fire or a flood, but it's way easier to lose data if it's just overwritten. Overwrite a file in-place and it's pretty much gone (good thing most editors don't, but create a temporary file then rename it, so old data still can be scrubbed from HDD). That had happened to my files a few times, but never had such experiences with paper.
Not to say commodity-grade paper may easily outlive commodity-grade HDDs, magnetic tapes or CD-R's. I still have my notes from university, but all the CD-R's I've burned around the same time are unreadable, and I've replaced dying HDDs quite a few times over past years. And paper is probably easier to recycle (although not sure about this).
Nice documentary about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZxI3nFVJs
Sure, if you're sending a letter. But as long as you maintain physical control over your paper it's far more secure than anything stored on a computer.
There's a reason Russia's FSB bought typewriters instead of a thought-to-be-secure computer system for the storage of its most sensitive secrets.
No, it's not super-secure, but it stops most casual snooping attempts. Taking off (and reattaching) a seal without breaking it is quite a bit of work if you choose the right wax.
You actually have to cut a tree to make a notepad. I hope in 100 years people will look at the "paper age" as we do see the era when people carving information in stones.
Why paper is worse:
* you cannot easily edit/alter information that has been already created
* it is hard to replicate and distribute
* version control is non existent (except book keeping)
* due to the replication problem and accessibility the information on it is not durable (at least not as durable as s3)
* collaboration is hard and not possible over the long distance
* security it terrible (even with all the stamps and hand signatures)
I know that paper might sound tempting sometimes, but I blame the schooling system which enforces kids to use it. We are trained to use paper first that's why it might seems easier. To learn how not to use paper (I don't use it at all for over 3 years) is really hard, it requires to change the workflows, mindset and attitude towards the information. But at the end of the day, it is really worth it.