No day off for a freelance writer
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here
I am what is commonly known in literary circles as a freelance writer. In other words I write for many publications but get none of the perks of a full-time employee — i.e. it’s Labor Day and I am laboring over this column because it is not a day off with pay for me. Neither will be Thanksgiving, Christmas or any other holiday that others take for granted as a day off with pay.
This column, however is not about the joys of freelancing, a term associated with writing and other professions, but dating back to ancient times when soldiers sold their skills with a lance to the highest bidder. In today’s language, a freelancer is an independent, free agent, self-employed, an unaffiliated person who sells his services to individual buyers. This newspaper just happens to be one of my buyers.
My office is is in my home, in a writer’s cramp surrounded by book shelves, stacked none too neatly with, of course, books. If I took a day off, like Labor Day, and cleaned off my desk I could probably find a flat surface somewhere under the threatened alvanche of paper, but since I don’t have the luxury of a paid holiday I will clean a small corner by stacking the papers just a bit higher and ever more precariously.
One of the books I had to remove from the desk to make room for the writing of this column was entitled "The Myth of the Paperless Office," a tome written by British writers, Abigail J. Sellen and Richard H.R. Harper on the management claim that computers would create a paperless office.
Sellen is a cognitive psychologist at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Bristol, England. Harper is senior researcher in the Interactive Systems Group at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England.
Their conclusion in this book was music to my ears because they said for the past 30 years the imminent arrival of the paperless office has been proclaimed, yet every office is choked with paper.
In their opinion, written when the book was published by MIT in 2001, the paperless office is still a myth. They even say that the World Wide Web, which allows storage and instant retrieval of data, has actually increased the amount of paper.
Sellen and Harper said the use of e-mail in an organization has caused an average of 40 percent increase in paper. I believe it.
On one of the newspapers where I freelance, we once used a 4 x 6 inch pad of paper to write photo requests. It was filled out by hand, attached to a clipboard on the chief photographer’s desk.
In the new paperless office, I am now required to find a computer, call up a photo request document, fill it out on-line, order it printed on a printer located completely across the newsroom. Then I am required to walk the length of the newsroom, retrieve an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper on which the photo request, which takes up less than a half page, is printed, then walk the piece of paper from there to the same clipboard on the chief photographer’s desk and attach it.
Perhaps the reason behind the print out is what Sellen and Harper discovered in their research. They said that while the web provides a greater access to information, humans need to print it "in order to read it and make sense of it." The two researchers found that the "introduction of new technology does not get rid of paper. It shifts the way in which it is used."
It was discovered that most people print out e-mail messages. The authors concluded "paper will continue to occupy an important place in the office life but will increasingly be used in conjuction with an array of electronic tools. The paperless office is a myth not because people fail to achieve their goals, but because they know too well that their goals cannot be achieved without paper."
Aren’t you glad you can touch and feel the newsprint — perhaps even smell it — on which this column is printed versus some squiggly paperless image on a computer screen?
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470, or by e-mail at elderstatesmansblog@yahoo.com)