In the 90's there was a vision for what business called the "paperless office." The advent and adoption of computers, email, cheap printers, database recordkeeping, etc. was supposed to drive office paper usage into the dustbin of history. What did we actually experience? US office paper consumption rose 14.7% between 1995 and 2000. Despite the digital tool kit, people in the office environment printed more drafts, emails, and files than ever before. This effect, or some would call it a paradox, has a name...Jevons Paradox.

Hopefully some of you reading this piece have capitalized on this whole artificial intelligence (AI) arc that we have been witness to the last few years. Let's take a short trip down memory lane to see how this arc began...

There's a critical skill in both business and in life that involves seeing into the future...accurately. It involves the ability to "read the tea leaves" as some people say. The idiom originates from the ancient practice of tasseography, a form of early fortune-telling that involved interpretation of loose tea leaf formation at the bottom of your empty cup. Sounds ridiculous to me, but hey, some people put their belief behind such parlor games. However, in the ensuing centuries, better leading indicators were developed to shine some light on what both the short-term and long-term future look like. In other words, how you should play the game to win.

The paper manufacturing industry has relied upon human-to-machine interaction for hundreds of years. It was sight, sound, smell, feel, and off-line lab tests that drove control moves in the process. I even heard old-school machine tenders tasting paper samples to determine ash content long before the crucibles came out of the oven. Anyone remember back tenders beating the reel with a stick to find hard and soft spots correlating to caliper profiles? If necessary, the subsequent control moves usually involved a human pushing buttons or turning dials or physically messing with valves and actuators. Decades of personal experience drove hiring and promotion decisions to make sure those operator instincts were finely tuned. Meeting production goals depended upon it.

My introduction to the amazing world of papermaking began in 1990. That was the very first class my freshman year of college in Paper Science & Engineering. Of the 60 or so freshman also in that class, there were like 6 females in a sea of males. I think that kind of scene played out in many universities offering STEM fields of study in those days. Interestingly, the freshman class dwindled to about 40 by the time we reached graduation several years later. It was a difficult curriculum after all. That kind of turn-over was not unusual. ALL of the women from freshman year made it to graduation and landed a permanent position somewhere in the field of papermaking.