Paperless society

[abunaitoo]

Many stores here have a minimum for using a card to buy stuff.
Charge or debit. Gift card is OK.
I've seen some people get all upset when they can't use their card to buy something small.
Market just got rid of books and magazines.
We now have only one book store on the whole island.
Schools no longer use books or have test on paper. All computer.
By moving towards a paperless society, I've noticed another disturbing side effect.
Kids in school cannot write.
Friends kids and grand kids all have handwriting of a child.
A few are now in collage.
Even their signature looks like a child's scribbling.
I'm guessing it won't be long before books and magazines will disapear.
Maybe even paper money will be gone.
Most cashier's these days don't know how to give change anymore.
Computer tells them how much to count out.
Everyone seems to have their whole life in a dumb phone.
My friends phone died and he lost everything.
Pictures, contacts, insurance card, appointments, birthdays, almost everything.
Gone, gone, gone.
They now have something called a cloud.
I wonder how long before someone hacks in and opens Pandora's box.
Anyone not know who Pandora is????

[DeadWoodDan]

I'm not against reducing our impact on the environment and do believe we are doing the correct thing. With that being said there are some cons as you have noticed. I believe there are ways around this but something must give to get there. With that being said I had an great Aunt to was a retired teacher while I was growing up so math and writing skills were engraved in my family. I could add the reduction in teaching and thus speaking different languages. Don't kid yourself by the I'm American we speak English moto. I've seen and had to hire less qualified individuals to those who speak the language and know it was the right decision. The reason being to sell our product in those cities/countries where our product is needed. Going paperless is just a part of the next century and as like anything else technology advancement.

If anything else it shows my age. As my great Aunt taught me I will teach my grandchildren.

[Bloodman14]

Yep, the right (or wrong) computer virus, and kiss society 'goodbye'. No one knows anything about self-suffiency, let alone surviving a minor disaster. Our recent winter storm showed that.

[contender1]

We can save the environment of wasting paper,, when lawyers are stopped from having copies of everything. Lawyers go through more paper than any school, or business out there.

Me?
I'm old school, and I teach & promote old school skills.

[john.k]

I went thru school with slates ,copy books and all that perfect writing stuff......didnt stick ,my writing is atrocious.......last job I had ,one of the partners (same age as me) had the most perfect handwriting you have ever seen.....just like the old 1950s copy books...and he wrote at normal speed ......I had to fill in all the maintenance logs etc ,and six months later ,even I couldnt read them.......Most of the under 25s couldnt read or write any more than message code.....And couldnt read the time from a round clock .

[DocSavage]

The last job I had before I retired was a tool/supply crib attendant we went thru 10 to 20 cases of paper a week and that was just the 8x11 stuff. We had legal paper and one printer that made banners just about any size you can think of.

[BrutalAB]

On writting skill:
Its a tool. It doesnt have to be pretty. It just has to work. If the writer and the reader both know and agree what is on the paper, the task is accomplished.
There are varrying degrees of precision required. The more technical a subject is, the higher the requirement to adhere to a set of standards for grammar, spelling and form.

What i dont understand is how the pharmacist gets me the correct medication.


On cashiers doing math:
People are, for the lack of a better word, lazy. Lazy is not an accurate word for what i am trying to describe. People develop the skills to do the job with the least effort. Could you imagine being a cashier before a register gave you amounts and having to get a pen and paper to calculate each amount? No, you learn 10s compliment or other methods of fast and easy calculations or you quit that job. It would otherwise be maddening on any kind of scale a cashier sees.


Finally, people learn and keep the skills they need.
In school if you needed perfect writting to pass a test regardless if the answers were correct, you learned perfect writting. In the real world, if your boss gets a document that is chicken scratch, but the information is good and he can read it just fine... may or may not be an issue.

[bayjoe]

My wife had joined the 21 century and started using a debt card. We were at Wally world the same time another church member was there and they got their debt card hacked. Ours was fine, but learned valuable lesson. When you use credit card the credit card company will refund your money if you get hacked. If your debt card gets hacked they can drain your bank account and the bank will freeze your account till they get around to researching it.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Looks like paper was needed in Houston, Texas ...but few people had the paper.

https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/mystery-man-hands-out-20-bills-to-houstonians/285-b54a0f07-8218-44af-9dc4-2a0b3715e576

A clip from the article:


... The line of customers was long, but he said the cashiers worked tirelessly to ring up as many people as they could.

Then the power went out.

The store wasn't about to close, though, and instead said they would remain open, but would only be able to accept cash and asked customers to limit their purchases to essential items only.

Spencer said many of the people in line didn't have cash on them and were prepared to leave.

That's when he said, "something cool happened."

[Garyshome]

Anyone not know who Pandora is????

Several things working together: .GOV/Facebook/Google/Twitter/china/PC/raceism......................
Democrats [communists] need a dumb population to enslave, thus the failures of the education system in this country.

[BigAlofPa.]

I bought some bolts for my new press today. The bill was 1.03. I gave the casher 20.03. He looked confused. I told him i get 19.00 back. Pretty bad when young'uns cant make simple change.

[Ed K]

I bought some bolts for my new press today. The bill was 1.03. I gave the casher 20.03. He looked confused. I told him i get 19.00 back. Pretty bad when young'uns cant make simple change.

I did the same a couple of months ago. The cashier called the store manager over and complained I was trying to scam the store.

[tai95]

I bought some bolts for my new press today. The bill was 1.03. I gave the casher 20.03. He looked confused. I told him i get 19.00 back. Pretty bad when young'uns cant make simple change.

I'm not sure how this site is on linking other sites, but if you search best buy $2.00 bills you can find a story of a customer getting arrested for trying to pass counterfeit money ie $2.00 bills. They even called the secret service in.

I also frequently have excess amounts of half dollars (that's another hobby). It's always fun handing a cashier one of them. Usually they just look at them like they were handed an alien life form. The best is when they have to read it and it says a half dollar and they ask "well how much is that"?

[Petrol & Powder]

If there's one good thing that came out of this COVID-19 mess, it was the wake-up call parents received about the poor quality of education.

I've listened to more than a few parents that were appalled when they realized how LITTLE their children were learning in public school. The positive result was the good parents took the opportunity to improve their child's level of learning. Many have vowed to send their kids to private schools (most of which didn't shut down), some have opted to home school their kids and many have taken a more active role in their child's education.

Enrollment in public schools is significantly down and a lot of folks are questioning what the schools have been doing with all of that tax money.

I am shocked at the lack of reading comprehension and writing skills (and I'm not talking about handwriting skills). I'm not convinced that is the result of moving away from paper. I believe that is simply the result of terrible education.

As for a paperless society, I'm not convinced that is as prevalent as it appears at first glance. We are relying on electronics much more, but the core of reading and math skills don't require paper.
And despite credit cards being widely accepted, cash is still king.

[MUSTANG]

How much am I bid for:
1000111010110010101010101000101010101001100010?

Hard assets only please.

[rking22]

I probably could if I absolutely had to but I ain’t converting that to decimal in my head! Oh heck, it’s 39,224,504,134,242 decimal, now my head hurts.

Looks something like the national debt

[abunaitoo]

I'm not sure how this site is on linking other sites, but if you search best buy $2.00 bills you can find a story of a customer getting arrested for trying to pass counterfeit money ie $2.00 bills. They even called the secret service in.

I also frequently have excess amounts of half dollars (that's another hobby). It's always fun handing a cashier one of them. Usually they just look at them like they were handed an alien life form. The best is when they have to read it and it says a half dollar and they ask "well how much is that"?

Remember the Susan B Anthony dollar????
It would always get mistaken for a quarter.

[abunaitoo]

I read a book "One Second After"
If that ever happened, we'd all be in deep dodo.
I'm sure something like that is bound to happen someday.
Some might remember back in 1989(?) a solar flair burnt out lots of computer chips, and shut down some power plants.
Wasn't that bad back the as we were not that reliant on computers.
Today it would be a mess.

[abunaitoo]

My hand writing as always been bad.
No matter what I tried, I just couldn't get the hang of it.
These days of old age, and working with my hands for all my life, I can't even read my hand writing.
Even my printing is bad.

[Bazoo]

Me?
I'm old school, and I teach & promote old school skills.
Me too.

[MrWolf]

The only "D" I ever received was in writing. My penmanship was never good and got a lot worse with some nerve damage. Always printed and still have problems deciphering my own writing. A woman maybe a few years older than me had the most beautiful hand writing. She made it look effortless.

[frkelly74]

The computer is a clever toy and I doubt that they will last, just a passing fad. One good EMP will fix things . I heard it said that dead tree tech will come back and things will be fine again.

[tinsnips]

Most older women have fantastic handwriting. I notice that from the checks they write ,men on the other hand not so much. I have nice hand writing due to the fact one of my friends growing up was a girl she taught me how to write . Now my spelling oh boy that is not good.

[tai95]

Remember the Susan B Anthony dollar????
It would always get mistaken for a quarter.

The Susan B Anthony dollars major flaw was it's size. Granted they tried to make it seem different with it's squared sides, but it just wasn't enough of a change to make a difference.

I think the best was when the mint was trying to push the new small size golden dollar coins. You could buy them directly from the mint at cost with free shipping. The mint did this in hopes of getting them circulating so they could phase out the dollar bill. What they never anticipated was the out side the box thinkers. These people were ordering them by the thousands with their credit card. When the order came in the people took them directly to the bank and deposited them to pay off the credit card bill. When people started posting this little "trick" online the mint stopped with the free shipping. Some of those posts people had claimed to have earned multiple first class tickets for anywhere in the world thanks to credit card perks.

[BJK]

Not everyone will be screwed when the paperless system collapses. Only the folks who bought into that BS will be lost. The solution is pretty simple on an individual level. The others? Let me know how they can be helped because I don't see a solution for them unless they want to implement it for themselves. Some folks are just meant to be professional victims and put themselves there.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I'm not sure how this site is on linking other sites, but if you search best buy $2.00 bills you can find a story of a customer getting arrested for trying to pass counterfeit money ie $2.00 bills. They even called the secret service in.

>>>SNIP
I'm not a big fan of the $2 bill...BUT, maybe I should be?
I like to use cash most of the time and I do receive two$ occasionally. I am lucky, that in my small town post office, there is a beautiful lady clerk that collects them...and it makes her day when I use them at her window...and no matter how heavy the FRB is, that I'm sending, she will be in a good mode that day ;)

[Scrounge]

Remember the Susan B Anthony dollar????
It would always get mistaken for a quarter.

As I recall it, they were often called "Susie B quarters."

[10x]

I have been in paperless societies.
When folks can not afford toilet paper and there is no toilet paper in public restrooms you are in a third world paperless society...
paper is a luxury

[Petrol & Powder]

Speaking of $2 bills, I doubt this applies anymore but there was a time when the entrance fee at Monticello (The home of Thomas Jefferson) was $18. If you paid with a $20 bill, you would always get a $2 bill (which has Jefferson on it) as change.

[BigAlofPa.]

I have a 2.00 bill i put a side. And some silver dollar coins too. The Susan b dollar coins i don't think i have any.

[Ed K]

The wife works at a bank. Some young people do not know how to sign their name...

[Scrounge]

Like everything else in life, there are advantages and disadvantages. I have 512gb microSD cards in my phone & tablet, and just bought my wife a new 10HD Kindle Fire that will also accept that size memory card. I carry a smallish library on my devices. About 13,000 books of fiction, and thousands more of non-fiction related to reloading, shooting, metalworking, gunsmithing, fixing various devices, and so on. I also buy dead-tree books. I'd kind of like to have one of each of everything in both libraries. Though I gotta say, it's a heck of a lot easier to carry 30,000 or 40,000 books in the paperless form. I have been playing with computers since the late 70's, when I build my first computer, a COSMAC ELF. It had 256bytes of memory, and 8 red LED's for output. They've come a long way since then, though I agree that they're not really ready for prime time yet. Neat toys, though!

Bill

[BamaNapper]

I had an appointment with a local surgeon last year. I commented on the pen he was using and he explained to me that fountain pens had become his passion. He explained that after decades of school and private practice his handwriting had become illegible. He had been taught to write fast. He would get calls from the pharmacist asking what he was prescribing his patients. He forced himself to slow down and relearn how to write, switching from ball point to fountain pens in the process. When he handed me my prescription it looked like it had been done by a calligrapher. I almost hated to hand it over to the pharmacy.

[jaysouth]

I must be a sadist. I enjoy torturing fast food clerks with Susan Anthony dollar coins, $2 bills and half dollars.

Last month I was at the Doctor. I requested that the RN doing the vital signs use a manual cuff and stethascope. She took my pulse for 30 seconds and doubled to get my pulse rate. She fumbled and stumbled with the simple math of 2X.

[VariableRecall]

The computer is a clever toy and I doubt that they will last, just a passing fad. One good EMP will fix things . I heard it said that dead tree tech will come back and things will be fine again.

The computer age has allowed the democratization of information and freed it from the exclusive control of major media companies. While the Big Ones are always trying to consolidate and censor whatever they find unappealing this month, as they say, "You can't stop the signal". Try as they might, they can't make us un-read books just yet.

Just image if you had to, let's say, De-Electronically store all the data in a single hospital. Everything Electronically stored in there? Get out your pen! The efficiency of care would plummet and potential for tampering would be much greater than before.
Would you like to spend all day searching through filing cabinets, when a computer can find what you need in far less than a blink of an eye?

Whether we like it or not, Some degree of automation is they key to advancement of our society. Save the Tabulation for the Machines and the real thinking to people. That leaves both of us working on our specializations.

If it weren't for the internet, I wouldn't have learned about reloading in the first place! My family was never around firearms, never had an experience with one until a policeman friend of my family took me out to the range when I was young. The Boy Scouts helped to give me the grave respect for firearms that they deserve. I may not have had the chance to get started in this without this "fad".

Some of my earliest memories when I was around 4-5 years old was interacting with my family's thoroughly Baby Proofed Windows 98 machine with a big old trackball.
My handwriting's pretty poor, so I usually just type things out most of the time. I still write things down on sticky notes and that sort of thing.

I'd say there's certainly room for both paper and electronic info in the future as well.

[uscra112]

Long ago (1960s) baby engineers at MIT were taught a SciFi story about a kid in an advanced society who could do arithmetic in his head. When his elders found out his unique talent, they made him a military top secret and kept him under armed guard the rest of his life.

[Light attack]

It's only going to get worse. Have you seen what Oregon is trying to promote in their schools? Math is racist. Stressing getting the correct answer is a sign of white supremacy. Don't have a link to share but it's all over the net. Sad.

[VariableRecall]

It's only going to get worse. Have you seen what Oregon is trying to promote in their schools? Math is racist. Stressing getting the correct answer is a sign of white supremacy. Don't have a link to share but it's all over the net. Sad.

https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf

I believe this is the document you're referring to.
I really don't know how anyone could expect a math teacher to be simultaneously some wacko activist at the same time.

278299
Here's a little excerpt from the document.

[Petrol & Powder]

The wife works at a bank. Some young people do not know how to sign their name...

I have no doubt that some young people do not know how to sign their name. But I don't attribute that lack of skill to computers, or phones or a trend to go paperless. I attribute that to the fact that there have ALWAYS been idiots.

[Shawlerbrook]

Part of the paperless society is Big Brother seeing what you are saying and how much you are spending and what you’re buying.

[tai95]

It's only going to get worse. Have you seen what Oregon is trying to promote in their schools? Math is racist. Stressing getting the correct answer is a sign of white supremacy. Don't have a link to share but it's all over the net. Sad.

I've seen the math is racist posted before in many different states. The one that really got me was what a NYC school sent out last week about the "8 stages of whiteness". I'll just leave it at that because it angers me that this crap is allowed to be pushed down kids throats.

[abunaitoo]

I see the gap between blacks and others getting wider and wider.
Having grown up in the 60's, when riots were a common thing, it just seems like it so much worse today.
The boiling pot didn't explode back then, but it sure looks like it getting close today.
Blacks were slaves all over the world at one time or another.
Why is it they have "moved on" and we haven't.
What they did to some of my family, interned" in WW2, was worse.
Lost everything, forced to live in a prison camp, then just let out.
Uncle used to say 'The past is the past. Learn from it, but don't dwell on it. This country has given us more than we could have ever had. Lust be thankful we live in this free country"
To this day, I have experienced prejudice, here and in the lower 48.
Bothers me, but I just feel sorry for them, and move on.
Wonder why blacks keep on bringing up the past, and can't seem to move on???

[BamaNapper]

Thomas Sowell wrote a book years ago that gives a straight shooting history of slavery. The book really puts things in perspective. The title is Black Rednecks and White Liberals. It's a detailed account of Slavery in North America and the black journey to the 21st century. But he pulls from all of recorded human history. If Sowell wasn't black the book would probably be banned as overtly racist.

The word slave comes from 'slav', referring to the huge number of people from the Slavic regions that were taken as slaves. No, they obviously weren't from from Africa, and they weren't black.
Prior to a couple hundred years ago, basically every society in the world practiced slavery. It was not a European thing, it was a human thing and was practiced on every continent.
It's basically a coincidence that trade between continents became practical about the same time the US was being formed, making the shipment of slaves economically feasible. For centuries before then slaves were marched overland between the African continent and Europe/Asia, and in both directions.
The US Navy was started mostly as a response to North African countries attacking American merchant ships. They would take the sailors as slaves and maybe ransom them back. Think 'the shores of Tripoli' from the Marine Corp Hymn.
There is a ton of history behind slavery that most people never hear. We're just fed the juicy bits that fit the narrative.

Opinion: Blacks typically don't keep bringing up the past. It's activists of all races trying to gain relevance and notoriety. If everyone just moved on, these people would no longer be deemed important. It sounds like your uncle had a handle on things, sounds like someone I'd like to meet. Unfortunately learning from the past is discouraged as schools work to remove actual history from history classes.

I think most of us have experienced prejudice. I'm your basic white male and I was denied one of the first jobs I applied for out of college. I got a nice letter from the state telling me that the job was reserved for female applicants. I was over qualified except for the chromosome thing.

[farmbif]

I guess when the fad of computers is over I can go find a phone booth again.

[uscra112]

Part of the paperless society is Big Brother seeing what you are saying and how much you are spending and what you’re buying.

And it gives them the power to shut you off by throttling your credit/debit cards. See John Brunner's sci-fi novel "Shockwave Rider".

[MrWolf]

What I find disgusting is the extreme left using 13% of our population as a symbol to force their version of control over us by taking freedoms of speech and protection while claiming they are addressing racism. As others here, I grew up in the 60's right next door to Plainfield, NJ. Basically a little Newark/Camden and known for the riots then. We could hear the gunshots at my house. What is happening now is planned by the left not to "help" an almost non existent issue in this day and age and try and bring back those days. I have never seen things as bad as they are now and it is being done to separate this country on purpose. Those of any color I know would prefer to be treated as Americans and are hard working and want nothing based off their skin color.

[Daekar]

I have largely embraced paperless after spending a good deal of time deciding on and implementing a plan for security. It involves things like MFA and multiple backups that annoy my wife, but the utility is hard to deny. I also am able to have access to far more information than I would otherwise. Truly valuable things are purchased on dead trees, the rest is trusted to the ether.

My job used to require that I fill out datasheets for machined parts by hand every day - I started using a fountain pen and retaught myself to write with a correct hand position as opposed to the classic left handed curl. Did that for years, handwriting got pretty good, especially numbers. I received multiple compliments on my writing over the years. Switched jobs and I almost never have to use paper (there is almost none in my office), and my handwriting has deteriorated again. I still have a glass dip pen that I break out to practice with every once in a while, but it's no longer a practical skill in 98% of my life. Gotta say, I feel like trading a pen for Word and Excel is an upgrade in a lot of ways... My handwriting is worse but my business composition and corny poetry (for pleasure) has never been better.

[abunaitoo]

My handwriting has gotten so bad, I can't even read it.
But it still looks better than lots of kids these days.