Over the past thirty years, many people have proclaimed the imminent arrival of the paperless office. Yet even the World Wide Web, which allows almost any computer to read and display another computer's documents, has increased the amount of printing done. The use of e-mail in an organization causes an average 40 percent increase in paper consumption. In The Myth of the Paperless Office, Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper use the study of paper as a way to understand the work that people do and the reasons they do it the way they do. Using the tools of ethnography and cognitive psychology, they look at paper use from the level of the individual up to that of organizational culture.

在过去的三十年里，许多人已经宣布无纸化办公室即将到来。然而，即使是万维网，它允许几乎任何一台计算机阅读和显示另一台计算机的文档，也增加了打印量。在一个组织中使用电子邮件会导致纸张消耗量平均增加40%。在《无纸化办公室的神话》中，阿比盖尔·塞伦和理查德·哈珀利用对纸张的研究来理解人们所做的工作以及他们这样做的原因。他们运用民族志和认知心理学的工具，从个人层面到组织文化层面来审视纸张的使用。