Kick and Bite

Have you heard about the paper from Xerox that erases itself in 16 hours? I don't know what to make of this stuff. I'm all for cutting down on the average 1,200 pieces of paper that the average employee uses each month, almost half of which is for daily use, but I don't know if this is the right technology to do it.

For starters, it will erase itself. That's bad - what if I want it for 17 hours? I have no control over it, and I think that's a big part of paper use right now - control to file, read, use however you want, then throw away.

Secondly, it's a technology. The paper itself probably goes bad after a while, stops working so to speak. So if you print off a 500 page report on this stuff and 10 of pages don't register any marks or (worse) erase themselves in a few minutes, what do you do? And I doubt the cost of this stuff is anywhere near paper.

I see this as a Kick and Bite product, one that is being introduced to keep a legacy process up and running. I'm not saying paper will fully go away, but I'm pretty sure that electronic paper will never make it.