Office-like programs based on paper: something else needed?¶

From an interview with Jacob Nielsen (found at slashdot ). Nielsen (usability guru) says that MS office (and the rest) are based on paper documents.

In the new world what we need is not memos but we need to build Web sites and intranets so when you communicate in companies it is via a collaborative environment. Some areas where they have had success is in Wikis and some of the blog software, but of course it is still quite primitive. But you could make something quite more interesting based on this on things like intranets.

Interesting. I do a lot of my writing on the web and I'm not using openoffice a lot (and almost no MSoffice). But writing is writing, at least, so I thought.

In a way, he's right. On the web I'm sprinkling the text I produce with hyperlinks. That is not something you do a lot in Office. You can write shorter pieces because you can just link to something you've written or read before, trusting that your reader will follow the link if he wants to know more.