Jason A. Wach

YOUR GOLDEN YEARS REALLY CAN BE THE BEST YEARS OF YOUR LIFE
by: Ethel Warshafsky

THE PAPERLESS OFFICE
FALSE DREAM OR REALITY?
by: Jason A. Wach

JUDAH YOU ARE NOT ALONE
by: John Stembridge

Family Values and American Politics
by: Lawrence Alan Gottfried

Marlins on a roll
By: Tzachi Gadish /Photos by: Harry Linet

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
By Rabbi Kalman Packouz / Aish Hatorah

THE LOCKED BOX OR
LESSONS YET TO BE LEARNED
AN INTROSPECTIVE JOURNEY
Writen by: Rucha Laya

WHO IS AFFRAID OF PHOBIAS?
By: Tzachi Gadish

The South Florida Women's
Committee for Shaare
By: Jacob Sharon

THE AGE OF REASON
by: Erik Arnold

The computer industry has been enticing me for years with this dream. No more mounds of paper to take up space and get moldy. No more worrying about whether to put the overflow of papers in my garage or a basement, or spend money on a professional archive. No more paying for printers and printer supplies and paper. No more finding out ten years later that the scrap of paper I'm looking for is not where I thought it would be after spending two days in the archives. When I want to look up something from ten years ago, I just push a few buttons and there it is. Five years ago, according to what I knew then about small to medium businesses and organizations, it was a false dream. I had read Bill Gates's book while on an airplane in 1997, "A Road Ahead", and when he described his successful efforts to make Microsoft virtually paperless, the idea sounded great. Then, I thought about my experience and those of the several hundred organizations and businesses with which I had some level of contact, including computer maintenance businesses and software companies. At the time, most us of had been advised that tape back-ups were the best way to go to store computer-generated data. We knew that better technology was out there, but who could afford it? The catch was that from time to time I received a call from someone who had lost their data, and could not recover the information from a "corrupt" or otherwise unusable tape. My own experience was that the tapes took a day or more to record onto, and that "calling up" a specific file was very difficult. And, the alternative of retaining a specialist in data recovery was more expensive than reconstructing the data by going back to the paper sources and reentering on the computer.

So, at that time, my advice to people was, "don't rely on computer backup. Print out everything which you can't afford to lose".

Now, cut to the year 2001. I read that Cisco Corp, a technology company, was going to eliminate all, or almost all, of its computer printers. I started thinking, "maybe in this age of Zip disks, which seem to both reliable and affordable", the Paperless Office has indeed come of age"!

I think that the main issue is "will that sinking feeling in my stomach be right when I receive a lost data message on my computer"? "Will I have lost all my data for good"?
If the answer is yes, the Paperless Office is indeed a false messiah. Still, there are other issues. Documents such as contracts which require original signatures still need to be retained in paper, but that should not be a major issue for most companies. Since Electronic Mail "has no signature", will people be accountable for what they produce, or will people have what became a term with sinister spy-movie connotations, "deniability" with regard to everything they produce by computer? And, even Bill Gates admitted that flipping through a long document or magazine or newspaper is more convenient in the paper medium than in the virtual reality of a computer. In the same vein, I can still usually locate a file quicker in a paper file than on drive "F" of my computer. What about the force of habit? Will it take a new generation to accept change? After all, I long ago accepted that leaders can sign peace treaties, but it may take a new generation which has not known war and strife to truly live a life of peace. Probably the most sensitive issue which I encountered is the portability issue. Way back in the stone age of computers, in approximately 1984, I was assisting a real estate office in computerizing their system of recording and storing their lists of available houses and other for sale when it became apparent that an employee who wanted to leave and set up shop as the competition needed only to press one button if they wanted to steal all the listing information, where before it might take days and days of going through files and copying. Are passwords protection enough, or can any fourteen year old "hacker" get around them?

I kind of knew what to expect when I searched the Internet for "The Paper-Less Office". Most or all the information, of course, would be published by those in the technology industry. In other words, I expected "RAH RAH RAH, TIS BOOM BAH, LET'S GO TECHNOLOGY!" And, indeed that's what I found. Site after site paying homage to the perfection of the coming age of "The Paperless Office". And, organization after organization which was going "paperless" - which in the technology age is sexy! Being a little bit old and cynical by now, I wasn't convinced that the situation was as rosy as the computer mavens wanted us to believe.

So, I kept searching for the devil's advocate, who would point out the potential pitfalls and give a true evaluation of who is and who is not ready for the promised land? Ok, as recently as March, 1999 an article in USA Today expressed that the "Paperless Office is still a Pipe Dream". And, Forbes expressed in August, 2000 that the Paperless Office is unlikely. Confronted with conflicting evidence, I searched for a reliable source of information to shed the light of truth. The example I used was a wholesaler with annual sales of $ 20 million. The owner is enthusiastic about going to the Paperless Office business model. His concern was that if he were to lose all his information stored only on computer, he felt that the problems in his competitive business could be so severe that he would be forced to close up shop, and go to work for his brother-in-law Hymie. The question. Should he take the risk? Hymie said yes, by the way. I talked to a number of computer professionals, all of whom expressed that it was possible, but that they weren't comfortable enough with the subject to make a recommendation. Then, to my surprise, it was our old friend Yosi Lipskar who gave what I felt was the best advice, prompting me to wonder whether he shouldn't be writing this column instead of me! He was astute enough to agree that each business is unique, and that every business-owner or organization manager needs to decide on their own.

However, his advice, as always, was logical and to-the-point in applying the classic steps to the current, more advanced technology. Of course, for computers, "classic" implies perhaps ten years in the past, as opposed to hundreds or thousands of years for music and philosophy. First and most important, educate yourself as to computer technology. If indeed your business would come to a standstill if you lost data, you can't afford to rely 100% on the knowledge of experts. Second, have a logical back-up plan and stick to it. Rather than backing up onto one Zip Disk or other medium once a week, back-up to a separate disk each day of the week and store in a different location. That way, fire or power surges or a bad disk won't cause you major Tsuris. Thirdly, back-up on more than one medium. In the Internet age, you can send data to a mainframe at a different location as a back-up easily, although it will cost you. Lastly, use a program that will allow you to restrict access to your vital data. You don't want an employee who has been with you one week to have the ability to make a copy of all your data, and then delete the information from your computer. I would add to his advice that someone new to computers should think twice about going to the Paperless Office. It is not only a matter of technical expertise, but of attaining a comfort level with the concept that your information is stored on tiny chips. And, before
"going paperless" talk to people in your industry who have done it, and a number of experts as to whether or not to do it, and the best software to use. Also, consider doing it in stages. You may want to start with payable records to your suppliers, which for some strange reason business-people seem to consider less important than the records they use to bill their customers.

Why ask more than one person's advice? I'd prefer to answer with an illustration. Say, you send out 15,000 statements to customers and 50,000 promotional offers to potential customers every month. You need to print either envelopes or labels for all of them. You don't want to find out after buying the software system and training all your people and putting your information on it that it prints the addresses at a funny angle. And, guess what? A software expert isn't likely to tell you. An accountant almost surely won't know. Only someone who uses the system in your situation is likely to clue you in.

Good Luck! If you "go paperless", you'll be what marketers call "ahead of the trend". So, be careful. We don't have 50 years experience as to the pitfalls to learn from!