Obviously, everyone here is either a fan, collector or user of relatively high-end pencils. However, whenever I buy high-end pencils, I have a slight fear in the back of my head about the eventual phase-out of paper. Obviously, this is very far into the future, as I don’t feel anything is currently threatening an imminent end of paper products, but I do feel like it will happen eventually.
This fear is usually pushed back due to the whistle-blower nature of it, but it does still leave me questioning: How soon do you all think that pens, paper, and pencils will all be deemed redundant by the expansion of computer technology?
Never. There will never be a day where everyone has good access to computers that is good enough to turn paper and pen redundant. The use in professional works (drafting, art, writing, …) may be dying out but I can see it surviving strongly as a traditional thing.
I think of it the same way one can think about letters, it may not be necessary anymore and “better ways” may appear but there will still be a passion for it.
When I was a child I worried that one day the graphite would run out and lead production would stop.
I do not think that paper, pencils, mechanical pencils, and other stationery items will stop produced because they have been replaced by digital technology. What I do see in the mechanical pencil industry is a standardization of models for mass consumption, cheap plastic bodies, rubber grips and few bold design models.
Many thought the ballpoint pen would eliminate the fountain pen. And not only did sales drop, but people couldn’t even give them away, except for the luxury end like Montblanc and Pelikan. Same could be said of mechanical watches, displaced by quartz accuracy. In both cases, there were adept companies who made bold moves and reestablished markets for these items.
The cheap mechanical pencil has always been around and will continue to be. The higher end ones dropped off down to something like less than 1% of all pencils made. Manual drafting was hurt so badly by CAD. Certainly outside of luxury brand companion mechanical pencils to fountain and ballpoint pens, great quality mechanical pencils have seen a rebirth. I think part of that is relative cost. ¥3000 back in the 1970’s/1980’s was a lot of money! Ignoring the enormous price jumps of various coveted vintage pencils, todays ¥3000 yen buys a lot more pencil.
Anyway, as long as paper is manufactured? There will be mechanical pencils made. Perhaps in some very distant future when paper is supremely expensive and technology so advanced that you can write with a digital stylus so precise and microscopically accurate that it’s capable of switching between writing modes (fountain pen, ballpoint, rollerball, felt tip, brush, calligraphy nib, mechanical pencil) that not only look the part but feel it as well (attenuating friction and texture)… we’ll still have mechanical pencils. Certainly they’ll remain around in our lifetimes.
Coming from industrial design background and currently working for a Japanese OEM, I have seen only a small percentage of designers along with myself still using pencils and paper to sketch. The younger generation prefers only wacom. It was a total shock to me as I thought with so many local legendary mp manufacturers people would atleast consider it as a valid tool but nope. I got greedy once and asked my boss to order few Rotrings and prismacolors and they turned down my request. So the end could be nearer than I expected atleast in my field of work.
“I’m trying to send this design to the 3D printer but I can’t find the `import from paper sketch’ option, what should I do?”
High end drafting pencils have become completely unnecessary already. CAD killed the mechanical pencil just like quartz killed the mechanical watch. Now they are enthusiast tools, and that’s perfectly fine. That’s precisely the reason they’re rising in price, just like mechanical watches. We spend money on things we like and enjoy.
I don’t know Diego, I’m not so clear. Did digital watches kill mechanical ones? I understand that today the design and production of mechanical watches is stronger than ever, if we believe the most popular vloggers. The most complex clockwork mechanisms in history are being produced, for those who can afford it, of course.
Furthermore, with the rise of 3D printers, anyone with the desire to do so can recreate any design from the past.
I don’t — consciously. At the same time, if I look at the range and amount of different types of paper I have accumulated over the years, from fine calligraphy paper pads to loose sheets of semi-transparent di-logarithmic and polar paper, from card stock to Seyes-ruled notebooks, I have to acknowledge that this fear has probably crept in at the level of my subconscious, and has forced me to collect paper as well.
Perhaps it’s not the fear that paper will disappear completely, but that certain types of paper, notebooks, index cards, etc. will suddenly no longer be available.
(written by someone who is wondering whether he will have to live to be two hundred or three hundred years old to use up his paper supply)
There are people who are into handmade paper making. Mostly for artistic purposes. Creating super clean Bond paper is pointless by hand as machine does it so much cheaper and better.
We are moving towards a paperless society, but I don’t think we’ll get there completely for a very long time, well past all of our lifetimes.
If at some point an electronics device maker produces a tablet with a surface that has very similar qualities to paper and a refined stylus that can adequately mimic the tip of a pen/pencil (maybe interchangeable tips depending upon the need), we might see use of real pencils and pens diminish even further. But people had predicted that with advent of the smartphone and the e-tablet over 20 years ago. I know for myself I write less with pens & pencils. I’m pretty fast with typing and enjoy the dynamics of quickly changing text and repositioning paragraphs. I leave writing more to thought exploration and brainstorming, as well as making task lists for easy reference (don’t have to open my phone). I have gotten out of the habit of using pencils for shopping lists. I keep a magnetic dry-erase board on the fridge and it’s easy to just jot down what’s needed and erase what isn’t, then photograph it with the phone for easy reference in the store. The only downside with large lists is that you don’t have a paper list in which to cross off items (although perhaps with an editor equipped with annotation capability, one could have the image in edit mode and strike off… will have to check that out). With larger ones, I’ll make a paper list for that and then also organize items by store sections so I don’t end up traversing back and forth.
Anyway, once we’ve passed on… who knows what’ll happen next in the grand scheme of humanity. We’re a pretty resilient species, but… we have some painful limitations. Our needs to exist are vast and if ecosystems collapse, there will be an inevitable mass culling of the populations throughout regions across the globe. Once things break down to the point where we’ve lost reliable Internet connections and access to functional computers that can be sufficiently powered… writing on paper will make a huge comeback. But yeah, not for good reasons. I wouldn’t want to be living through the decline period. It’ll be like living in the Dark Ages, but with people having far more destructive weapons to unleash on people without any kind of reliable law enforcement agencies to contain it.
It’s a cloudy day here… maybe the gloom colored my mind today. Sorry, folks.
Same here. The trick is to use a lot of paper on trifles. I write one or two words per page, for example, you take a thick nib pen and write any random phrase right in the middle of the page: I like cats… The Graph 1000 is a good pencil… Stratocaster…
