Trope-a-Day: No Paper Future

No Paper Future: Played mostly straight.  And there aren’t many data rods around either, except in specialist applications; ubiquitous wireless networking, and the slate (i.e., future-iPad-analog) replace them more or less completely for routine applications.  (And no, unlike Star Trek, no-one has a stack of slates on their desk.)  Of the paper documents that do exist, most of them are smart-paper that can electronically edit itself or become other documents or its own appendices.  Actual paper tends to be a mark of the very traditional on special occasions.

(Actual paper books are a little more common than random paper documents, but even they are collectors’ items.  That said, there are entire bound books made up internally of smart-paper, so you can keep a bookshelf in your house which can change to contain whatever books you need from your (bigger) e-book library essentially on-demand. [Incidentally, as an author’s note, you have no idea how much I want this technology.  Really.  You don’t.])

Money-wise, it’s similar.  While there is still metal coinage and paper money – well, plastic-silk money – around, virtually all transactions are done digitally across the data network.  The physical currency exists nearly exclusively for certain types of anonymous transaction, traditionalists, and eccentrics.

Polishing

In other news, I’m spending some time this week polishing a manuscript containing close to 45,000 words of my short fictions and metafictions, mostly from here but also some other stuff, for actual e-book publication.

Exciting!