I led a small revolution today. I went to a meeting of the management board without taking any paper with me. Instead, thanks to the preparatory work of my ever-excellent Bernard, I was able to access all of the necessary documentation from my lap top. Though there was no obligation on anybody else to follow suit I was happy to note that several colleagues joined me in eschewing (most) paper for the extent of the meeting. I don’t think we will ever entirely rid ourselves of paper (I don’t see how, for example, we could have studied the draft 2014 budget except through the detailed A3 spreadsheet we received from the director of finance) but I think we can, with just a little effort, get by with using much less paper, and that was the point of today’s initiative. I admit that it is not easy. My generation of bureaucrats was brought up to distribute sets of paper almost like a spoor. But given the rate of technological progress (especially ubiquitous wifi and broadband and steadily-cheaper tablet prices) it is high time we reconsidered our working habits and practices.