Near Print Beyond Paper

-PDFs were created to replace faxes as a means of sending and viewing information. Faxes were unreliable and could not efficiently transmit documents. PDFs were more convenient because they were a way to digitally send full documents and graphics. They are "easy to send, quick to download, cheap to store, and a snap to open"  (pg 125 of reading).

-PDFs are a great way to digitally contain online archives and would foster online libraries. Before PDFs really kicked off, Adobe published a promotional book that described how frustrating the world of offices dependent on paper was. They helped readers to imagine an efficient world without fax jams and colossal paper waste.

-The article also expresses the frustration users encounter with the inability to control a PDF. You cannot edit, excerpt, or annotate. You may only use a hand icon to scroll around the document and read. Users describe being unable to copy text and paste it into a word document (an essential task for anyone who reads and interacts with information). It is also frustrating to have to open every PDF separately and the text is very clunky.

Comment: I have a lot of problems with PDF in my personal life because of how awkward the format is, it's hard to navigate, and inconvenient to use on your phone or inside of a web browser. However, in the workplace PDF is an essential tool and makes things a LOT easier. I worked for a company that considered themselves to be "paperless" and every document that came into the office was scanned and turned into a PDF and then recycled. We had a digital archive of our client's information that made retrieving information and printing it out really simple.

Question: Does PDF need to be changed or updated? It really is meant to only be a picture form of a document and has succeeded as such. Do we need to be able to interact more and navigate PDFs easier when we have the ability to do this through other programs like Word Processors?