As we approach a full year of pandemic protocol – home offices, remote learning, reduced public travel, avoiding crowds in retail, events and even extended family – many of us have seen a shift in how we use technology and ultimately incorporate the principles of sustainability in our professional and private lives.
Sustainability refers to meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In addition to natural resources, we also need social and economic resources. This is the Google definition. How does sustainability apply to us individually?
Have you embarked on a project to declutter – clear out books, magazines, CDs and other media now available in streaming or cloud applications? Have you streamlined your tech – adopted multi use devices – enhanced cell phones, tablets, eNotes (ReMarkable; Sony DCP eNote, Boox, etc.), eReaders (Kindle, Kobo, Onyx) – even laptops (Lenovo Yoga Book) that function as these devices?
Have you done more on line – bill paying, automobile registration & license renewal, shopping for groceries in addition to other hard goods, ordering take out meals – all to avoid crowds or to mitigate closed government offices and other public spaces with restricted occupancy?
Faculty of the Digital E Ink University
Raise your hand if you have held video conferences with friends and family in addition to your professional meetings. If you have celebrated a birthday with a checkerboard screen of family and friends on a digital device, you have upped your sustainability game!
We are adapting digital tools in new ways to facilitate our new normal. The eNote we use for project notes, meeting minutes and action item lists to enhance our home office integration also function as eReaders – keeping our reading materials – whether books, magazines or newspapers – or resumes, project outlines and reports we need to keep close at hand. We can mark up those files too – no need to print and edit manually. Many of us have become publishers – creating our own eBooks and content to deepen knowledge in our professional environment. We blog, comment, curate and share information professionally and personally. No longer constricted by short battery life – we have enjoyed the low power and easy readability of digital paper in more ways than we have in the past.
If your laptop has a digital paper display – you are in the master class. You have all the benefits of digital paper devices along with email, direct connection to the cloud, multiple apps to manage your content for multiple uses – all of the Internet of Things benefits. And a web cam too. You are probably working from the dining room supervising remote schooling, too.
Our first hybrid learning generation
All of these formerly road warrior capabilities are now commonplace in the home office. The idea of ‘going’ to work has been replaced with firing up a display and getting down to business.
How has the new normal and digital technology changed your work environment? Contact us at social_media@eink.com.
In the meantime, check out the productivity enhancement of digital paper:
https://www.sony.com/electronics/digital-paper-systems/t/digital-paper-notepad