Why Paper is Better

I'm watching NHK Professional program and what struck me very interesting is to see the CEO of DeNA who brought out her paper organizer. She pointed out that it's very quick to open and no need to wait (for boot time). Here are my thoughts on paper:

1. No wait: it's always there, ready to be used. No boot and no power up time. And nothing to install (software wise). You just use the paper (or book). However, once it's printed or written, then you can easily start with clean slate and start a fresh (which is easy to do with hardware or HW).
   
2. Portable: it is rather small and light. Computer hardware is usually too large, even those micro PC (like OQO). Or on the other hand, with PDA, the screen is too small.
   
3. Customizable: it can be folded or even cut to be even smaller. A hardware (PDA or computer) is fixed size. You can add peripherals but not remove the core HW. By tearing out a piece of paper, you can share the information easily, too. With computers, you must use the same hardware (like Palm IR "beaming") or both connected to internet to do email based exchange.
   
4. Direct location: a book (like dictionary or Bible) or diary or organizer, you can get a feel for the page you're looking for and find it quickly by knowing the physical position ("muscle memory" at work). With computer, there is no such interface (touch or digitized screen has that potential but I've yet to see such an interface). The closest thing is like the iPod interface where faster turn jumps you further along, but the problem is that it's easy to overshoot with such an interface (much like fast forwarding a video).
5. Freedom: with paper, you can have outlines and forms and even printed text but you can write (add) as much as you want (depends on the font size) in any location. Computers on the other hand, you can delete and move and edit (with pencil you can edit too but not so easy).
   

(I may have to go find my old notes on these thoughts and will update when I have time.)

On a related note, there's a youtube of "Introducing the book" which I believe is funny spin on what a book is from our modern perspective (with "tech support" giving a hand).

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