“Paper is no longer the master copy; the digital version is.”

That’s Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, quoted in an article in yesterday’s New York Times on the concept of the paperless home. The dream of the paperless office, it seems, will never be realized, in part because paper is such an efficient medium for collaboration, but also because the company — not the employee — usually foots the bill. At home, where “users” are also the purchasers of paper and pricey printer ink, there’s more incentive to go paperless. Cost savings are great, but so are clutter-savings. That, coupled with inexpensive scanners, are leading more (but still very few) households to digitize receipts, tax returns, business cards and all other manner of daily ephemera that needs to be stored, but doesn’t need to be in your way. Digital cameras and MP3s have gotten us comfortable with maintaining valuable information in digital form. But it doesn’t just have to be photos and music anymore.

Now we bank online, pay bills online, write to each other, buy, sell, and trade — all online. These transactions all used to be recorded with physical, paper documents, but now they are recorded as digital data first, then only expressed physically on paper as needed. Utility bills now arrive via email, and even some physical interactions (such as in-person purchases at an Apple Store) trigger emailed, digital-only receipts.

What does this mean for us? Less paper sounds good, but locating physical documents is sometimes easier and more efficient than finding digital ones. So search technology still needs to improve. And paper documents don’t disappear when, say, coffee is spilled on your keyboard, or there’s a power surge, or you drop your laptop down the stairs. So backing up will be ever more important, but so will filing systems. We’ve had years to standardize methods of storing and organizing physical documents (visit any library), but how will digital documents be managed? Call me skeptical, but I don’t think it’s best to leave that up to the end users. We need thoughtful, well-designed software for managing all these different documents before the paperless home can be as efficient and enjoyable as it sounds.