Over the past 30 years, many people have proclaimed the imminent arrival of the paperless office. Yet even the World Wide Web, which allows almost any computer to read and display another computer's documents, has increased the amount of printing done. The use of e-mail in an organization causes an average 40 percent increase in paper consumption. This text aims to explain why people continue to use paper in the digital age.;In "The Myth of the Paperless Office", Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper use the study of paper as a way to understand the work that people do and the reasons they do it the way they do. Using the tools of ethnography and cognitive psychology and drawing on original case studies in a diverse set of organizations, they look at paper use from the level of the individual up to that of organizational culture.;Sellen and Harper show that there are many important lessons to be learned from organizations that have tried to "go paperless". One is that putting new technolog