Ready for the self-erasing paper?
December 7th, 2006My friend and colleague James Thurman, the FIR-HSG’s top news hub, pointed me to a piece of news hardly noticed on this side of the atlantic: Xerox’ efforts to develop erasable — or rather: self-erasing — paper.
As the New York Times reports, the researchers have developed a specially coated paper with a light yellow tint. The printed information on the paper disappears within 16 to 24 hours or immediately when the paper is heated. (Is this perhaps a user-friendly further development of thermal paper?) The only limit in the printing-and-disappearing process appears to be paper life.
This is potentially wonderful news for our environment: According to a Xerox study, the average Dilbert of this planet prints 1,200 pages per month, 250 of which are returned to the recycling bin the same day.
The New York Times continues:
Brinda Dalal, [an anthropologist with Xerox], has discovered … a notable change in the role of paper in modern offices, where it is increasingly used as a medium of display rather than storage. Documents are stored on … computers and printed only as needed; for meetings, editing or reviewing information.
In other words: instead of going paperless, as many people predicted in — as far as I can remember — the early Nineties, we are often using hardcopies as sort of an outsourced short-time memory.
As far as I can tell, the law still considers paper as a storage medium, and if erasable paper is a success on the market, it will be extremely interesting to see if this triggers changes in the law, in a sense that the role of paper as a permanent storage medium will be legally less important than nowadays.
Speaking of the new paper’s possible market success, one drawback might be the compliance costs the introduction of this paper necessarily generates:
- For instance, I am not sure how erased “erased” really will be — in other words: can we be sure that nobody, not even a criminologist, will be able to read the information that has faded on a piece of erasable paper? For nothing is more dangerous than covert information. If the information can be regained, employees should be made aware of this issue, and they might even be instructed to treat the paper as if it contained sensitive information, or forbidden to print sensitive information onto that paper.
- In the latter scenario, the human factor will remain as a residual risk, but it can also be the primary risk. One rather harmless example would be the intern who by mistake mails a large number of invoices printed on the erasable paper to his employer’s customers.
- In any event, the self-erasing paper should be easily distinguishable from ordinary paper. I have doubts that a yellowish tint will be enough in this respect.
Fingers crossed that these risks and compliance costs won’t outweigh the economies caused by the use of erasable paper!
December 17th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Sounds really interesting! But, in order to predict the future area of application, there is some more basic information needed as the costs or the “vanishing point” (concerning the temperature) of the printed information and whether the information can reappear under certain circumstances.
In my experience as a former company employee, people often act careless with their printing and storing habits. Secret information, or at least information that is not meant to be public, is being printed and carried out of the office in order to be read on the way home (in public transport) or even at home. As you mentioned it, the print-outs are not meant to store an information (as this is done by copies on hardware), It’s just more comfortable and less “exhausting” for the eyes to read information on paper than on the screen.
Soon after the reading, people often get rid of the hard copy. As the information is stored on the company’s server anyway – they don’t need it anymore. But sensitive information on paper should not be thrown away or put in any public waste paper basket, as it can be read by anyone.
Using the self-erasing paper could be a way to prevent companies from losing secret information by careless employees. Even though the “erased” information could probably be made visible again by chemical experts with some kind of chemical reaction, self-erasing paper could be useful, as it’s harder to get the information visible again by anyone.
Under these circumstances, I consider the self-erasing paper as a useful -at least not a completely useless- invention.