My first word processor was WordStar, running on an Osborne computer sporting the CP/M Operating System. Back in 1982, it seemed an amazing feat to be able to type a document, format it, save it to disk, modify it, and print it, all with a computer sitting on my desktop. Considering that the technology being replaced was a typewriter, this was a brilliant leap forward.
Since that time, of course, computing technology has evolved considerably. Computing networks, the Internet, the World Wide Web, Google, Wikipedia, cloud computing, PDAs, smart phones, tablet computers and more have all changed the way we think about computers and communication.
And yet, somehow, especially in business and organizational life, the word processor and its output — a stand-alone textual document, formatted for printing — have survived to this day substantially unchanged, with word processing and collections of words being treated essentially the same way they were thirty years ago.
Is this because such documents and the conventions of traditional word processors are still as useful as ever and continue to make modern businesses more productive?
No. Quite to the contrary, I will argue that such office documents are millstones around the necks of otherwise contemporary organizations, quaint anachronisms whose continuing usage is dragging down productivity and gumming up the works of organizational life.
