Aftermath of a Prediction: F. W. Lancaster and the Paperless Society

Professor Lancaster’s audacious prediction of a paperless society by the end of the twentieth century is examined from multiple perspectives. Rationales for the prognostication, textual and contextual; reception by the profession; and impact on the literature of library and information science are reviewed. Bibliometric data is introduced in support of the extensive citation links to Lancaster’s core writings. The accuracy of Lancaster’s prediction and the leavening insights of the collateral literature are considered. Defining the Experience Sometimes we call upon fiction to explain and to make us wiser. The transition from print dominance to paperless ascendancy was one of many important historical shifts. The change from scroll to codex and the introduction of moveable type were also hugely significant innovations. Linking them all together, Thomas Wharton tells us that: Within every book there lies concealed a book of nothing. Don’t you sense it when you read a page brimming with words? The vast gulf of emptiness beneath the frail net of letters. The ghostliness of the letters themselves. Giving a semblance of life to things and people who are really nothing. Nothing at all. No, it was the reading that mattered, I eventually understood, not whether the pages were blank or printed. The Mohammedans say that an hour of reading is one stolen from paradise. (Wharton, 2002, pp. 75–76) Aftermath of a Prediction: F. W. Lancaster and the Paperless Society