Word: paperless
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Most architects make paper drawings, then use design software to visualize those as walk-through images. But Lynn's "paperless" practice brings computers in more radically and from the start. Using programs developed for auto designers and film animators, Lynn can find his way into twisting forms. "You define space in the computer with curves," he says. "Usually an architect would draw points, and connect lines and planes with them. With these programs, we've shifted to thinking of space as the sheltered enclosures of a flexible handkerchief." One thing that makes Lynn new is that he knows why they...
...Labs. When you arrive at work, you could simply stroll through a secure, smart door and listen as your desktop virtual assistant reads aloud your schedule for the day. The temperature and lighting will adjust automatically to your preferences. Though we probably won't attain the mythical paperless office, there will likely be less of the messy stuff lying about, thanks to high-tech, rewritable parchment. And forget about typing: sophisticated voice recognition will let you tell your PC what to do (though all that yakking could just as easily make you hoarse...
...most common conceit about our future, of course, is that the kind of cash we will most want to use will be digital. But the paperless wallet has proved as practical as the paperless office. In late 1997, two New York City banks tried an experiment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. They spent millions installing special digital-cash-card machines in all kinds of retail sites--hairdressers, retail stores, even taxicabs. Then they distributed--for free--smart digital cards. Surely, if digital cash was this easy to use, people would stop using the green stuff. Wrong...
...past two years alone, here's what has happened: more people are working from home; companies are using business-to-business (B2B) websites to coordinate their supply chain more efficiently; inventories are lower, meaning warehouses are emptier; and although the paperless office has failed to arrive, online habits are reducing paper needs by millions of tons. "We're still going to have to clean up the environment," says Joseph Romm of Washington's Center for Energy and Climate Solutions. "But the Internet is allowing a type of growth that uses energy and resources better...
...things that use lots of materials--like three cars in the family driveway--and more on things that don't swallow up resources--like telecommuting and surfing the Internet. Maybe downloading collections of music from the Web will reduce the demand for CD cases. And while visions of a "paperless office" have proved wildly wrong so far, we still have an opportunity to use computers to cut consumption of paper and the trees it comes from...