Transcriber: Silvia Lomas Reviewer: Denise RQ
I love books.
I really do.
I even got my favourite one here today,
the book of "Struwwelpeter"
Please raise your hand, who knows this book?
(Laughter)
Wow, that's a lot.
I don't know about you,
but this book has a sentimental value to me
because it reminds me of my childhood.
My parents used to read it with me.
And if you ask my parents,
this book was less a parental warning for me than an inspiration.
I really liked the story and the tale about Flying Robert
because this was the guy who was blown away by the wind
because he was playing outside in stormy weather with an umbrella.
I tried it a few times because I wanted to fly as him.
It never quite worked actually.
Today I want to ask two questions,
two simple questions that led to my life changing experience
from a book collector and book lover to a digital nomad
because living paperless means freedom.
So, the first question is why?
Why did I become paperless?
Three years ago, I owned around 800 books.
I really like my books, I love them I have a special connection to my books
because nearly everything I know I know from books.
They've been my teachers my whole life,
everything I know about history, my philosophy,
even my understanding in science I know from books.
I remember my first job as a caretaker.
I was cutting the lawn, and I was watering the flowers and stuff
and from my first salary,
I bought the complete volume of the Feynman Lectures on Physics.
It meant the world to me because I'm a nerd.
And yet, now, I have only 17 printed books
and read all my stuff completely digital
even if I said, a few years ago, I will never ever read on a tablet.
But three years ago, I felt stuck in life.
I didn't feel any good at that time,
because I felt stuck with my studies in physics,
I felt stuck with building my start-up,
and I felt bound to my flat in Nuremberg.
I had the feeling that I needed to go out of my comfort zone,
that I'd work further on my new company.
I wanted to move to Berlin, but I couldn't.
I had a lot of books, and magazines, and scripts,
but I had little to no money in my bank account.
I asked a very good friend, Chris, for advice,
and he asked me the fundamental question.
He asked why?
"Why do you keep all those books?"
And I had the feeling that he didn't understand my situation,
but actually, he understood it way better than I did.
He asked why?
"I know you spend a lot of money and time
collecting this rare editions and all your books,
but you're not happy with them nor are you free."
And within an instant, it just made click,
and I knew what to do.
And now, I read all my documents, I read all my books on a tablet,
even if I said three years ago I would never do this
because living paperless means freedom.
You know desperate times call for desperate measures,
and I was in a situation
I would have never thought about becoming paperless.
So today, I want to be your good friend and ask you the question:
why aren't you living paperless yet?
You heard about my challenge, but what is yours?
Why aren't you living paperless yet?
And I want to give you the next ten seconds
to think about your challenge
why aren't you living paperless?
So I can imagine maybe one of the reasons why you're not living paperless
is that paper gives you a certain feeling of security;
you have all your documents,
and even if your computer breaks down you have all your stuff.
Or maybe you say, like me,
you like the tactile feeling of a book
and the scent of a new printed book.
Or maybe you say you're just used to it.
And that's the reason why you want to keep it.
Have this reason, your challenge, in the back of your mind;
we'll come to that later.
But now, I want to ask you the second question.
And the second question is: what?
What does my life look like now that I'm living completely paperless?
And what could society look like if every one does?
Well, my journey began at my desktop
and my little paper corner.
I have a normal desktop,
and sometimes, it was more chaotic, like this one,
and sometimes it was super clean,
- at least to my standards, so please don't call my Mum -
and I started scanning all my documents,
I was giving away all my books,
I was donating them, I was selling them, I was giving them to good friends,
and became completely paperless,
and after a few weekends I came to my last pile.
My last pile.
And from this point on,
I had a completely different life.
And actually, when you ask family and friends,
when I was telling them about that I was living paperless right now
they thought it would look something like this.
(Video) Emma!
Emma!
Emma...
Emma!...
(Applause)
Yes, maybe I was annoying as this guy was,
but a friend of mine told me a few weeks ago
that there are Japanese toilets that work completely paperless.
How crazy is that?
(Laughter)
So the question is what's in it for me?
What does my life look right now that I'm living paperless?
Well, the first thing is I don't do searching anymore.
I find everything within seconds.
Because there's no question where I have my documents
if they are lying on my desk, if I have them in the drawer,
if I have them in my--, I don't know.
It's never a question, because all my life is in a cloud,
encrypted, and I can access it instantly with every device.
It could be my laptop, but it could be also yours.
I could use your phone,
and I could use your tablet.
And that's really something that gives me freedom
because living paperless means freedom.
And my life's shrunk down right now - I have a size zero household -
so I was not just giving away all my books,
I was giving away everything I have
so now I have the freedom to work wherever I want.
At first, it was on my desktop that looks super clean all the time
because I don't have paper to mess it up,
but to be honest, I don't have a desk anymore.
I'm 100% mobile, I have no settled domicile,
but maybe that's another TED talk.
Now my desk is maybe a coffee shop in Berlin
- this photo is one week old,
I was finishing my TED talk.
At the end of the year, this will be my desk:
I'll be sailing through Southeast Asia on a catamaran,
and we'll be working there.
And this is the third thing:
living paperless gives you a free mind.
And this is a true relief, because now, everything has a reminder.
If a meeting comes up, I have a reminder,
if a document, a contract is due, I have a reminder,
and the documents says I have to take action
in one way or the other.
And this gives me real freedom
because if I don't have a reminder, it does not exist in my world.
And that's really freedom to me.
So, this is my journey,
how I became paperless,
my challenge,
and while I was on this journey
I found some really interesting stuff,
some really cool and crazy facts
about our society and the way we work with paper.
I'd like to share those facts with you.
When you think about living paperless one day or the other,
you'll run into environmental issues,
and this was the number I've read in an article:
Greenpeace says that we use 250 kg of paper.
Everyone of us;
private use, not company;
of course this is not just the paper you print out,
it's also the toilet paper you're using, the tissues, and all that stuff.
But how crazy is that?
And really interesting about this fact
is not that is four times the weight of your grandmother,
the really interesting fact is
that this number increased eight times in the last 50 years.
So why?
We become more and more digital, why do we need more and more paper?
Well, one reason is
that we have access now to free tutorials, to Wikis, and to eBooks,
and people print it out.
I did it myself.
A few years ago, I printed out a 750 page-tutorial
how to program an operating system from scratch,
and programmed it page by page.
So maybe this is one of the reasons,
but to be honest,
this number is huge when you think of paper
but it's even larger when you think paper is not a raw material;
we need our best resources to produce paper.
So on a daily basis,
every one of us in this room needs 37 liters of water
to produce the amount of paper we need.
And not just that, we need around 8 kWh
which is around five hours running your microwave,
for the amount of paper you need and two kilograms of wood.
And that's actually 40% of all the wood in the world
we need to produce paper;
that's two out of five.
And really crazy about these numbers is that a lot of that
we just throw away without ever reading it.
And of course, this starts in the companies,
because companies have a huge need for paper
and I read this statistics from 2012,
that every third employee prints his email before reading it.
If the company culture would change,
a company could save up to 3% of company revenue.
In case of Apple Inc., that would mean 5.5 billion in a year.
So this is the environmental aspect, but to be honest,
this was not the reason why I became paperless.
I'm much more interested in the bigger scale.
So today is the day of the Exponential Change Conference
and I'm sure we hear a lot of really interesting talks
about how our society will develop,
and what challenges we will face in the future.
But I strongly believe
the first step to this new future is becoming paperless
because we are on the edge to a new era.
It was quite fun being actually in the era of paper,
but it's over.
We're maybe the last generation who use paper the way we do it right now.
Your children and your grandchildren will have a totally new approach to it,
when they even use it.
It's always hard actually being on the edge of something;
ask the guys who wrote on stone,
ask he guys who wrote on papyrus, or leather.
It's always hard to change the way we used to do something.
But I think it's time to get fully digital
because living paperless means freedom.
So think back to your ten seconds.
Think back to your biggest challenge,
and maybe today is the day
when you get the first little step into a new future.
Maybe you're not printing all your emails,
or maybe you give away all your books, like I did,
and keep only a few of them with the highest sentimental value to you;
or maybe you read your newsletter only digital, only online.
Think about what could be your next step into the future.
And my last question for you is:
are you ready for the next step?
Thank you.
(Applause)