"Paper and computers may not be polar opposites so much as conjoined twins."

Hold or fold

LEAH PRICE

Nicholas A. Basbanes
ON PAPER
The everything of its two-thousand-year history
448pp. Knopf. $35.
978 0 307 26642 2

"In the decade since then, Silicon Valley has touted the paperless office as the answer to deforestation. Basbanes’s rejoinder is that paper, made for centuries from old clothes, was one of the first industrial products to incorporate recycled materials. More famous for its digital spying, the US’s National Security Agency processes plenty of old-fashioned paper, to judge from the 100 million documents it pulps every year before turning them over to manufacturers of pizza boxes and egg cartons. Paper and computers may not be polar opposites so much as conjoined twins. Paper punchcards were integral to the first calculating machines, and the twentieth-century spread of personal computers and printers increased consumption of the paper that they were originally expected to render obsolete."