Computers and the Internet have changed our world totally. We work, spend leisure time, communicate, and do a bunch of things differently today compared to that of 20 years ago. The internet is one big technological break-through. Even though it’s so obvious today, there was a time that not every big player believed in it. Internet was thought by some to be merely a short-term trend, an asteroid that would pass but wouldn’t come back.

I’ve dreamed and still am dreaming of an automated information workflow at home. We get paper – that’s the problem. Paper tends to be a nuisance. You have to flip pages, to get to the message. Paper can get torn, wet, overrun by milk, lost – oh yes, definitely lost. I usually half-process a letter. For example, when there’s an insurance company letter stating a lot of blah-blah, I open the letter but leave it hanging on the table for some time. I just don’t feel like processing it to the very end at that time. So when I would need it, the piece of paper isn’t in the location I left it.

Imagine the papers would be automatically converted into PDF documents or something else, but essentially they’d be digitized and indexed with good keywords. You could search through thousands and thousands of documents in a blink of an eye. Your first paycheck? Got it, there! Your latest employment certificate? No problem, it’s here.

It would bring about a tremendous change to the efficiency we handle information.
And the most important thing is that it would be exactly our own, personal,
important information – not just anybody’s blog or an article on a webzine, but it
would be the most valuable piece of information we have. How much would you value
such a system?