Paper is the future of information technology – news commentary by Andy McCourt.

Many printers feel it is only a matter of time before their worst fears are realised – a complete shift in the way that information is conveyed. They foresee a future wherein they are disenfranchised from the production of information, a marginalised irrelevant craft that is tolerated for only as long as the gain-sayers can find no alternative.

This is a view recognised by the paper industry. According to Bernard Cassell, managing director of CPI and member of the board of the NPC, the industry is dogged by an unfair image.

"The National Paper Council strongly supports the view that paper has a PR problem. It is probably one of the only truly sustainable industries but seems to be tainted by an emotional view of a protester chained to a tree.

"We have been discussing with other industry participants how we might work together to counter this mistaken view and believe that an industry-wide collaberation is possible."

Recent developments indicate that paper use is evolving in a way that will position it strategically within the IT industry. Certainly, some types of information will mutate to all-digital archiving and retrieval but paper is finding a place even within this environment.

Blu-Ray paper discs set to change DVD use.

The first example of this is known as Blu-Ray. Just as the world gets used to DVDs supplanting CDs, the founding members of the Blu-Ray Disc Association, (Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson) are predicting a new PC and HDTV data storage medium of the future.

Blu-Ray, as its name implies, uses a 405nm blue-violet laser instead of 650nm red laser and this enables much more data to be packed onto the disc – a massive 25 Gigabytes capacity or 50 Gigabytes in double-layered version. Backwards compatibility with DVD and CD is assured.

What has set the Blu-Ray world alight is the prospect of paper-based discs. Developed by Sony and Toppan Printing in Japan, the two companies say such paper-based disks will be cheaper to make and less environmentally harmful.


With CDs and DVDs the substrate is normally made from a polycarbonate plastic, which is ultimately derived from crude oil. But Sony and Toppan Printing have replaced this with a mixture of paper and another polymer. The resulting prototype consists of 51 per cent paper but is still capable of storing up to 25 gigabytes of data. Regular DVDs have less than half this capacity.

Worldwide production of optical discs is approximately 20 billion per year. The combination of paper materials and printing technology is also expected to lead to a reduction in cost per disc and will expand usage. Being paper, the discs can be printed using offset printing and can be shredded for added security.

Such cooperation between leading electronics and printing/paper companies is producing very real benefits with HP, Dell, Sharp and others announcing that, from late 2005, all their PCs will be equipped with Blu-Ray drives. The possibility of incorporating a paper-based disc into printed paper products presents unlimited marketing opportunities.

Magazine-quality displays

Whilst Blu-Ray is definitely not blue-sky, a recently shown display technology from Hewlett Packard, by its own admission, is a few years off.

HP calls the new system a post-aligned bistable nematic (PABN) LCD. To make it, a printing plate covered with an array of sub-micrometre pits is smeared with a clear polymer ink and stamped onto a transparent sheet of polycarbonate plastic, creating a forest of polymer posts. The sheet is overprinted with red, green and blue filters and thin metal electrodes. A second transparent sheet is printed with electrodes, and a liquid-crystal material is sandwiched between the two.

The result will be an A4 screen resolving 7000 x 4000 pixels; close to magazine quality. Adrien Geisow, HP’s manager of display research based in Bristol, UK, estimates a PABN display capable of a magazine spread is about five years away.

Thin, film-based re-imageable displays using organic polymers have been in development for some years with Philips announcing it plans mass-production within a few years through its Polymer Vision subsidiary.

Papering over the truth?

Leading IT analyst and commentator in the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age, Graeme Philipson recently wrote; “…computers have vastly increased paper consumption. The number of pages of paper produced in the Western world is growing by more than 10 per cent a year and will more than double over the next ten years. One study found that introducing email into an office increased paper consumption by forty per cent.”

He continues; “The ‘paperless office’ has become such a mantra that most people assume we are moving towards it. But we are not – we are moving in the opposite direction. The marginal cost of an extra sheet is close to zero.

"We can easily scribble in the margins. We can read it on the train or as we walk, without any need for electricity. We can fold it up and put it in our pocket, we can spread it out on desks, we can screw it up in frustration. Its resolution and colour capabilities are still far beyond those of electronic screens.”

Philipson’s conclusion is; “There are valid arguments for using less paper, on environmental grounds alone. Most people probably use more than they need, and there is no doubt that many document flow practices could be improved. But paper will never disappear – we will continue to live in parallel paper and electronic worlds.”


MY CALL

It’s an old argument but one worth re-visiting every now and then. The global paper industry has changed its practices beyond recognition in the past two decades. There are still vestiges of irresponsible production and use, such as using virgin rainforest as a fibre-source, but thankfully, Australia and New Zealand lead the world in eco-friendly paper production and use.

Paper has proved itself to be a more sustainable resource than oil. Modern forestry management with chain-of-custody mapping, plus recycling, shows consumers we care and that they can use responsibly-produced paper without any guilt feelings.

We just need to work on the PR. It’s the image that’s at fault, not the products. The Toppan/Sony joint venture of paper-based Blu-Ray discs (BD-ROM), is a fantastic start. (Back to floppy disks??) Here, the paper-printing industry can proudly claim to be helping the environment, using less of a critical resource – oil, lowering data storage costs and benefiting consumers. The prospect of 25 Gigabyte thin paper BD-ROMs embedded in digitally-printed products, ready to ‘peel-off’ and play has to make savvy marketers salivate.

Add to this the enormous strides being made using digital technology to produce seemingly conventional printed products, and we have a very fine song to sing.

Our industry mantra henceforth should be, “The power of digital – the convenience of paper.”