Computers may save time but they sure waste a lot of paper. About

Host: The office lights hummed softly — sterile, fluorescent, white and merciless. Outside, rain brushed against the glass, a rhythmic tapping that felt almost like a pulse. Rows of cubicles stretched endlessly, each glowing with the dim blue of a monitor, each occupied by someone half-alive, half-digitized.

Stacks of paper crowded the desks — reports, memos, emails printed “for reference,” their edges curling, ink bleeding faintly from the humidity.

Jack sat at one desk, his sleeves rolled up, his tie loosened, surrounded by paper mountains. He stared at the printer, its green light blinking patiently, another page sliding out — unread, unnecessary.

Jeeny leaned against the doorway, a cup of coffee in her hand, watching him with quiet amusement.

Host: The room smelled of toner, fatigue, and faint traces of desperation — the perfume of modern labor.

Jeeny: (grinning) “Andy Rooney once said, ‘Computers may save time, but they sure waste a lot of paper. About 98 percent of everything printed out by a computer is garbage that no one ever reads.’ Looks like you’re personally proving his point.”

Jack: (dryly) “Yeah, well, Rooney never worked in compliance. If you don’t print it, it doesn’t exist.”

Jeeny: “Funny, I thought that’s what computers were for — existence without trees.”

Jack: “That’s the illusion. We think the digital age saved us from clutter, but it just changed the medium. Paper piles became data clouds. We’ve just buried the waste in servers instead of drawers.”

Host: A printer somewhere in the background began its mechanical sighing — a familiar, endless ritual of the corporate temple.

Jeeny: (walking closer) “You always sound like you’re one update away from nihilism, Jack.”

Jack: “Not nihilism. Realism. Look around — every person in this building is producing words, reports, presentations — and none of it will be remembered in a week. This is the empire of redundancy.”

Jeeny: (tilting her head) “Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe every document matters to someone — even if just for a second.”

Jack: “And then they forget it. Or forward it. Or file it under ‘miscellaneous.’ We’ve turned communication into an industrial process. Even our thoughts have templates now.”

Host: The lights flickered, the printer jammed, and a groan rose from somewhere down the hall — a small rebellion against the mechanical gods.

Jeeny: “So what, we go back to handwriting letters and burning candles?”

Jack: “At least letters meant something. Someone had to care enough to write, to seal, to wait. Now we send a thousand emails a day and mean none of them.”

Jeeny: “You’re blaming the tools for human laziness. That’s like blaming the pen for bad poetry.”

Jack: (leaning back) “Maybe. But the pen never convinced the poet he was saving time. Computers did. We’re slaves to efficiency — and all it’s given us is faster emptiness.”

Host: Jeeny sipped her coffee, her eyes thoughtful, the steam rising between them like a quiet mediator. The office hum deepened — distant keyboards clattering, the faint ring of phones, the symphony of a world too busy to listen.

Jeeny: “You know, my father used to print every photo he took. Whole albums — sunsets, birthdays, vacations. Then one day he switched to digital. Thousands of pictures on a hard drive. He never looked at them again.”

Jack: (nodding) “Exactly. We don’t document life anymore — we hoard it. We mistake storage for memory.”

Jeeny: (softly) “Maybe because real memory hurts. Digital ones don’t.”

Host: A moment of silence hung between them, fragile as a torn page. The rain intensified outside, rivulets tracing patterns down the glass — tiny rivers flowing nowhere.

Jack: “You think Rooney was being nostalgic — pining for simpler times. But he was pointing to something deeper. Every new convenience demands a sacrifice. We saved time — and killed patience.”

Jeeny: “And maybe killed beauty too. There’s something comforting about holding a page. Feeling the weight of your thoughts. The screen makes everything... disposable.”

Jack: “Disposable thoughts for a disposable century.”

Host: He gathered a handful of papers from the desk and dropped them into the bin. They fluttered down like pale leaves — each one printed in bold fonts and corporate jargon, all indistinguishable.

Jeeny: “Still, you can’t deny what computers gave us — connection, access, freedom. You wouldn’t even be able to say this without one.”

Jack: “Sure. But tell me — how connected do you really feel? When was the last time you had a conversation that wasn’t interrupted by a notification?”

Jeeny: (quietly) “You mean this one?”

Host: A faint beep broke the silence — her phone flashing on the desk. She ignored it. A tiny rebellion.

Jack: (smiling faintly) “Touché.”

Jeeny: “You act like cynicism is clarity, Jack. But maybe it’s just fatigue. Maybe the problem isn’t the machines — it’s that we treat them like gods instead of tools.”

Jack: “And gods demand worship. That’s the problem. We bow to screens like they’ll give us meaning, when all they give us is speed.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe the answer isn’t to destroy the temple. Maybe it’s to bring silence into it. To use the machine without letting it use us.”

Host: The printer, miraculously, began again — smooth, quiet, obedient. Pages slid out in perfect rhythm, their edges crisp, the ink still wet with human impatience.

Jack: “You really think silence can survive here?”

Jeeny: “It has to. Or we’ll drown in our own noise.”

Host: She reached over, pulled a single freshly printed page from the tray, and looked at it. A quarterly report, filled with numbers and projections — lifeless, but precise. She turned it over — the back was blank.

Jeeny: (handing it to him) “Look. Even the machine gives us one side untouched. Maybe that’s where meaning still lives — on the side no one prints on.”

Jack: (half-smiling, half-sad) “Blank space. The last human luxury.”

Host: They sat in silence, listening to the rain, the hum of lights, the slow breathing of a building that never slept. The printer light blinked again — patient, mechanical, eternal.

Outside, the world glowed with a million screens — each one promising connection, each one devouring attention. Inside, two people sat in a room of paper and light, realizing that in trying to save time, they had forgotten how to inhabit it.

Host: Jeeny tore the printed page in half — one side filled with data, the other still white — and slipped the blank piece into her bag.

Jeeny: “Maybe we’ll write something real on it someday.”

Jack: “If we remember how.”

Host: The lights dimmed, the rain slowed, and the office clock kept ticking — precise, indifferent.

Somewhere between progress and waste, between noise and silence, the human race kept printing — not because it needed to, but because it didn’t know how to stop.

And the blank pages — those rare, stubborn survivors — waited quietly for meaning to return.