Looking Back To Measure Progress

Posted by Kevin D'Arcy on Jul 11, 2013 8:29:49 AM

The following article comes our guest blogger Brian Kopack of Imaging Office Systems; a member of the IIMDA Marketing Group.

I was up in the attic recently and I found a box of stuff I’ve been saving over the years – kind of a personal time capsule. Mostly the typical stuff, awards, baseball cards, old college uniforms and newspapers. A lot of newspapers. I’ve managed to save newspapers to record what I thought at the time were seminal events in history – mine or the world’s. The last issue of the Chicago Daily News, The Washington Post the day Richard Nixon passed, the Chicago Sun Times reporting on Michael Jordan’s 1st championship - all cool to look back at now.

Then I hit the jackpot – the centennial issue of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).newspapers to record what I thought at the time were seminal events in history – mine or the world’s. The last issue of the Chicago Daily News, The Washington Post the day Richard Nixon passed, the Chicago Sun Times reporting on Michael Jordan’s 1st championship - all cool to look back at now.

In 1989, I finished high school and started college at Butler University. In August of that year, the WSJ centennial issue was published. A lot of pomp and circumstance, a lot of history and most interestingly, a lot of predictions. Now remember, in 1989, the Y2K hysteria hadn’t even started to percolate, so the question, “What do you see coming for the year 2000?” was almost science fiction.

The paper did an interview with several of the top technology minds of the time to get their perspectives on what would be next. Robert Noyce, then the Vice Chairman of Intel predicted, “In another 10 years, we’ll replace file cabinets with computer memory…..you’d like to have everything that comes across your desk sitting in there, so you can take action on it.”

That was 1989.

He predicted the paperless office by 2000. Unfortunately, a large portion of the business world in 2013 still hasn’t caught up to his vision. Now I get not everyone in business has the “early adopter” gene, but even the most cautious would agree that a.) he had the right idea b.) it is totally possible today – both from a cost and effort perspective and c.) the almost 25 years since he made that prediction is a long enough beta-test to prove his idea wasn’t really a fantasy.

If you haven’t embraced electronic content management yet, what are you waiting for now? The next big thing? Come on, already!

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