The first time Xerox announced the extinction of paper to the world was 1984. What it had to back up its claim was a concept of graphical computing; an idea of representing the documents office use every day visually so that what you see is what you get. At that time, the company invited me to its exhibit of "The Paperless Office."
But in my published story that fall, I noted that Xerox was beaten to market by as much as a few years. Maybe Xerox had the idea, but Apple had already capitalized on it. I credited the STAR Workstation with advancing the cause of Ethernet in office networking using easy to manage cables that look more like telephone cords. I was gently told by my hosts that I missed the point--my reader doesn't care about CAT 5 cable, and never will.
Yet I loved the irony that read more here