Paper and Quotes: Nuha Salibi

Article shared by Fouad Kronfol

A nice article about paper, as an antidote for the digital revolution, from a friend. For those of us who are not comfortable with the increased intrusion of "virtuallity" in our world it is an engaging read. As a stamp collector as well as a bibliophile, I am very much more at home with paper than with screens. 

The argument that we are destroying the environment by cutting trees for paper is one-sided. In fact paper is both recyclable and trees can be grown wisely, while the use of many other elements in the digital gadgets is also depleting them from the environment.

This could be a good subject of discussion among our XUNICEF members.

Fouad 

March 2024 – Paper and Quotes

“Blank paper has always inspired me.” – Daniel Handler

“Paper is more patient than man.” – Anne Frank

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” – William Wordsworth

          I am drowning in paper – pads, notebooks, scraps, snippets, shreds, remnants, bits and pieces – name it , I have it all around me. That is not counting the books, magazines, journals, albums, dictionaries and catalogues. Actually, my romance with paper is probably in my DNA. Both my father, a voracious reader, and my uncle owned book/stationery stores and so we were fortunate to have always been exposed to books. We used to spend hours transported to a different world – that of books and paper. Since we were tiny toddlers, we have had the privilege of owning, handling, borrowing, and reading all kinds of books to our hearts’ content.

          In The Forgotten Bookshop of Paris, Daisy Wood writes that she prefers to hold the physical copy of a book she wants to read rather than use a tablet; this is because she can smell the pages as she turns them, look at the covers, and flick back to a passage she wants to remember or had not understood. Books and libraries were her “spiritual home, so quiet and calm and full of knowledge.” I do agree with her and I am happy to say that my grandson Ian feels the same way. As a matter of fact, when he was still in high school, he decided to spend his summer vacations going through a list of classics he had compiled and using his pocket money buying those books even though he did have the Nook as well.

          Chris Baraniuk in his article “A cut too far: The people who can’t give up paper” (BBC Future, September 25, 2023) states that “For 400 years, British hydrographers have made paper charts of the world’s seas and oceans, Each one captures the detail of coastlines, straits, or channels. A document like this brims with information , noting the sea’s depth at various locations, the position of rocks, or places where vessels can’t drop anchor . . . So significant were nautical charts of the past that they were often depicted in portraits of the greatest mariners including James Cook.”

          The UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO) is responsible for keeping those charts up to date and expect the crews of shopping vessels around the world to make the adjustments manually on paper copies. Now, this chart service is becoming a thing of the past as the UKHO is trying to switch to ‘digital-only versions’ although this process is taking more time and, as a result, the transition has been put on hold because many ships are still using paper charts and prefer to depend on them as backup. “Paper it seems still rules the waves.” (Baraniuk) 

          Actually, the 2,000-year-old paper-making industry is impacting the environment and is still considered crucial to countless businesses and government systems globally. For decades, computers and smartphones have provided an alternative as their illuminated displays can be virtually written or erased with the press of a few buttons or taps on a screen. For all that, paper is extraordinarily difficult for many organizations to forego and become fully paperless. This fact might be due to habit, aesthetics , functionality or even security, making it “difficult to give up paper” as I well know from my own case. I use my age as an excuse to resist resorting to the Internet whenever I can, which is becoming more difficult no matter how stubborn I seem to be.

          Erin Smith discusses the “virtues” of paper in her YouTube programs, mainly that of bullet journaling. She explains that “in Australia there is a cottage industry that manufactures quality stationery products which include paper, pencils, pens and even paint”. Smith herself is not against digital products. After all, she is a YouTuber and prefers reading e-books. Nevertheless, she believes in the value of handwritten journaling. She also thinks that although using a Google calendar is fine, the person using it has to keep checking to remember the dates, whereas when that person actually writes down that activity, there will be no need to keep scrolling as it is not only better etched in her/his memory but is kept in full view on the calendar page opened to that day or month.

 Indeed, a study published in 2021 has found that there is an increase in brain activity when information is handwritten versus recorded on a smartphone or iPad. Richard Harper of Lancaster University believes there is a difference between information written on paper versus that on a screen. In his book The Myth of the Paperless Office, co-authored with Abigail Sellen, he explains why paper is still important in many businesses as follows: “When you have something particularly nuanced and elaborate to say, putting it down on paper may be a good idea.” Moreover, when organizations have attempted to go completely paperless, they have faced many hurdles as evidenced in many government divisions like the UKHO and the American National Archives and Records. Besides, in the more clandestine sectors of government, as well as the logistics and health care industries, paper plays an important role due to the prevention of computer leaks. In the European Union, quite a few countries still use paper for medical prescriptions, while in the U.S., which is way ahead in using electronic health records, there still remains whole parts that rely on paper.

Thus, “paper is still considered the backup medium whenever electronic systems fail”, especially in situations where a cyberattack occurs as happened in an Alaskan community in 2018. Actually, Wikepedia has its own emergency plan called ‘Terminal Event Management Policy’ that turns to printing information on paper when there is an “imminent societal collapse.” In truth, even though the use of paper is disappearing in many situations, there are niches where its use persists. Hence, according to Oskar Lingqvist, global leader of McKinsey’s Paper and Forest Products Practice, due to covid, other kinds of non-graphic paper, especially cardboard packaging, tissue paper, food packaging and online shopping are flourishing. “If you expand ‘paper’ to mean everything from fancy notebooks to Amazon packaging, it’s clear the material is more popular than ever.”

In brief, although huge areas of forests are being cut down to satisfy packaging, (three billion annually, according to EPN, or the Environmental Paper Network), “paper will likely never go completely out of fashion, a fact that Sergio Buffoni, campaign coordinator of EPN, finds “insane” as this product will all be thrown away eventually. For all that, Baraniuk ends his article by saying that “paper just seems to have a habit of sticking around. Many people will argue that this is worth it for the smell of a brand new book, for the handwritten letter to an old friend, or the records that survive even in an apocalyptic future when the last computer and database fails.”

Quotes:

“All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.” – Friedrich Nietsche

“Trust is like a paper . Once it’s crumpled, it can’t be Perfect again. – Wisdom Quotes 

“Words mean more when I put them down on paper.” – Maya Angelou

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent Van Gogh

“Both sides defend a truth which is not all of the truth.” – John Buchan

“Choose to be optimistic. It feels better.” – the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

“For some people, small beautiful events are what life is all about.” – Anon

“Practice kindness all day to everybody, and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.” -Jack Kerouac

“Lebanon is a country where freedom was once sacred and the essence of our very existence. Let’s pray for it to continue leading in that way. ” - Nuha Salib Salibi