History Main / NoPaperFuture

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' films:
** Subtly parodied in ''Film/StarTrekInsurrection'' where we see Picard at a desk...piled high with [=PADDs=].
** More obviously stated in ''Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome'':
-->"Don't tell me you don't use ''money'' in the future!"\\
"But ''we don't''!"
*** Although that one may be referring to the fact that the Federation does not use money at all (at least not how we do). On some occasions when money is actually exchanged it has physical form. Trading in latinum is one example.

** [[spoiler:Arrest and torture, anyway. The death was an accident (Mr. Buttle's heart condition was not noted in on Mr. Tuttle's file) which naturally led to even more paperwork]].

* ''Film/DemolitionMan'':
** Dollars have been replaced by credits, and currency is exchanged through subcutaneous microchips in people's hands. Toilet paper doesn't exist, either.
** Subverted by the swear fine system, which provides a paper receipt every time someone uses harsh language. Swear enough, as Spartan does, and one need not worry about using the seashells.

* Played with in Creator/WilliamGibson's ''Literature/SprawlTrilogy'', cash is illegal but there's still a lot of physical newyen floating around and the antiheroes commonly use them to buy things on the black market.
* Aversion in Creator/HPLovecraft's story, ''"The Shadow Out Of Time"'', the [[TimeAbyss impossibly old]] [[StarfishAliens Race Of Yith]] are explained to have stored information on the past, present and future of multiple civilizations throughout the universe in a massive library beneath their city of Pnakotus, in Australia's Great Sandy Desert. Said library is full of metalbound books made of some very durable material. At first, it seems impractical to store such vast amount of information on paper, but then [[FridgeBrilliance you realize]] that the library was [[RagnarokProofing designed to survive]] more than ''250 million years'', without a single soul to care for it. The protagonist makes his way into the library and easily finds perfectly intact a volume that he had written ''mid-Pleistocene''.

** Perhaps you can get machines which can tell you if the "credit chips" you feed them are counterfeit? Sort of like a coin sorting machine going "Not funny!" when you feed it washers?

* Subverted in the ''Planet Pirates'' series, where all printed matter is on a paperish plastic that gets wiped and recycled after use.
* And subverted the opposite way in a story from the ''War World'' anthology series, where a starship captain has a personal "printbinder" in his quarters that prints in permanent, never-fading ink on material so much tougher than paper that it can survive an explosion, then puts it all together as a hardcover book.

* Averted in Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/IWillFearNoEvil''. While the use of paper money has declined to the point that many stores aren't set up to handle it, cash hasn't disappeared because it's hard for politicians to take bribes paid with credit cards.
* In HarryTurtledove's stand-alone novel ''Noninterference'', a character remarks something like "Cash isn't illegal, it's just that nobody does anything legal with it"

* Averted in Bujold's ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'', Barrayar still uses notes and coins, despite using "credit chits". Which are never described in detail, even physically, but serve at least the functions of credit/debit cards and certified bank checks. Also Barrayans will write notes on sheets of plastic called ''flimsy'', serving the same function as paper.

* In ''TheUnidentified'', this is averted. Paper exists but isn't made out of trees, it is made out of recycled stuff.

*** It's more like the fact that the public schools are underfunded and if you don't have a SIN you can't even go to school.

** The Cain books show that they really use data-sheets and the paper parts are just for hard copies and show.
*** It was explicit that this was only the case for one man, and that he purposely faked ink stains on his robes and fingers to cover it up from other adepts and scribes.

* ''VideoGame/MegaManStarForce'' has an odd semi-aversion of this: while money is all digital (zenny is a number on your transer), but a lot of data is on scannable cards, mostly battle weapons (replacing chips from Battle Network) and what are left of Net Navis.

** Most episodes handle the "cred cards" and "cred sticks" exactly as if they ''were'' cash, however, with thugs gloating over big bags of "creds", and larger quantities of physical "creds" being treating as a greater quantity of ''valuta''. Issues of traceability, of crime victims canceling their cards, and so forth never seem to arise. It's possible that there's a brisk business in pre-paid debit cards, because, frankly, you don't have to be a criminal to have transactions you'd rather not have recorded.

** And then the whole artifice falls over when you suddenly get a power cut/communications failure.
*** Though it's already been argued that the US system as it stands now, even with it's paper money, is quite vulnerable to system failures, cyber warfare, and other electronic issues. We may have paper money, but enough of our funds exist only in electronic format that the economy would still take a major hit if anything happened to the systems regulating and tracking these virtual funds.

* Actually TruthInTelevision-electronic paper has been around for a few years, but development costs (and multiple recessions) prevent it from becoming mainstream.
** And e-paper is generally not disposable, erasable, or flexible. These things are changing, but not there yet.
** On the other hand, [[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/05/amazon-says-it-now-sells-more-kindle-ebooks-than-print-books.html more people are buying ebooks than paper books]] (at least at Amazon), so there's that.
* Many colleges store value on the students' ID cards, for purchasing meals and other things in campus facilities. Additionally, many professors accept assignments via electronic submission, but there's a bit of a pushback against this by some.
* Currently, the vast majority of all money isn't actually paper but electronic data.

* Cloud storage is steadily becoming an alternative to hard drives. Music is commonly stored as digital files vs being on physical storage like records or cds.

* ''Film/DemolitionMan:

* In many end times novels based on Christian eschtalogy (especially Darbyist varieties), like ''Literature/LeftBehind'', it is always a given that the economy is being moved in this direction, so as to make the implementation of TheMarkOfTheBeast easier, due to a line in the Literature/TheBible about one needing to have a mark on the head or right hand present to buy or sell, thus obviating the need for paper money.

* Usually played straight in the ''Fanfic/{{Bait and Switch|STO}}''-{{verse}}, with characters usually using either [[DataPad PADDs]]. Hard-copy documents, such as Eleya's commission as a lieutenant commander and CO of the USS ''Kagoshima'' at the end of "Fanfic/TheUniverseDoesntCheat", are typically printed on "archival plastic", which is apparently nearly indestructible. However there's a brief moment in chapter two of ''Bait and Switch'' where an admiral crumples a report and chucks it over a railing, where it bounces off a Breen's helmet. Queried about that in the ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'' Foundry mission for which the fic is a novelization, the author cited RuleOfFunny: "You can't crumple a PADD."

** More obviously stated in ''Film/Star TrekIVTheVoyageHome'':

* Subtly parodied in ''Film/StarTrekInsurrection'' where we see Picard at a desk...piled high with [=PADDs=].
** More obviously stated in ''Film/{{Star Trek IV|The Voyage Home}}'':
-->"Don't tell me you don't use ''money'' in the future!"
-->"But ''we don't''!"
** Although that one may be referring to the fact that the Federation does not use money at all (at least not how we do). On some occasions when money is actually exchanged it has physical form. Trading in latinum is one example.

* In the ''QuadrailSeries'' by TimothyZahn, set in the late 21st century, paper money appears to have vanished - the stated means of exchange consist of credit transfers or the "cash stick", which appears to be a USB drive-type object that you can upload to and download from virtual sums of money.

** The Protheans fully embraced this trope, storing both their memories and information on crystals, OrganicTechnology or even ''[[UsualUserInterface water]]'' which they accessed with their empathic abilities. Javik even dislikes datapads for how "primitive" the technology is compared to what he's used to.

* Subverted in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "Silence in the Library" - although the only paper we usually see is the Doctor's mysterious 'psychic paper', which is presumably technological in nature, this episode contains the biggest library in the universe: the size of an ''entire planet''. And it's full of good old-fashioned paper books. It's explains to be the result of a fad; paper books are just the current one, and the entire library is stored digitally anyway. The Doctor lampshades it, musing that although technology keeps improving - mentioning technology real (e-books) and imagined (fiction mists) - nothing can replace "the smell of books".
** In hindsight, perhaps it would have been better if the library ''had'' been [[NightmareFuel paperless...]]
*** Well, they also kept all the books stored in a massive electronic library that apparently took the entire planet's core. Gigantism is the word for the future engineers, apparently.

** In ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', there are paper books in Kasumi's room, which she seems rather embarrassed about.
*** It seems that she isn't really embarrassed about having ''paper books'' so much as she is by the fact that several of them are cheap [[RomanceNovel romance novels]].

* Averted in the 2007 ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|Reimagined}}'', which has paper printouts (from a dot matrix printer, no less) aboard the ship. This is to be expected, as the ''Galactica'' is a relatively primitive old workhorse, not one of the sleek new state-of-the-art line ships like ''Pegasus''. As a token gesture to futureness or alienness, all sheets are octagonal. (The "cut corners" are a [[MythologyGag reference]] to the original ''Battlestar Galactica''.)

** In the spinoff, ''{{Caprica}}'', ordinary paper is commonplace but people also frequently use devices called e-sheets. These super-thin PDA like devices feature touchscreens, can be folded like paper sheets, used to take notes, leave messages and send e-mails and are apparently quite cheap.

* Averted in the 2007 ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|Reimagined}}'', which has paper printouts (from a dot matrix printer, no less) aboard the ship. This is to be expected, as the ''Galactica'' is a relatively primitive old workhorse, not one of the sleep new state-of-the-art line ships like ''Pegasus''. As a token gesture to futureness or alienness, all sheets are octagonal. (The "cut corners" are a [[MythologyGag reference]] to the original ''Battlestar Galactica''.)

*** HongKong did this, but only with the $10 [[http://www.banknotenews.com/files/8d2f5e98b93a7fef4e43cc0912b02ee4-334.php note]] (That white part is actually a clear plastic window on the real thing). It's less popular than the $10 ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_ten-dollar_coin coin]]'', because most machines won't take it.

* Cloud storage is steadily becoming an alternative to hard drives. Music is commonly stored as digital vs analog.

* Avoided by ''Series/BabylonFive'', where paper's still around in the 2200s. See the quote at the top. Cash also exists; while it's not clear whether the Earth Alliance credit has cash denominations (on one hand, they're never seen, and on the other, shady dealings ''do'' occur in terms of credits), the Centauri Ducat consists at least of coins, and is thus preferred for shady transactions.

* The ''Cyberpunk 3.0'' RPG used this as the reason for the change in the setting from that in ''Cyberpunk 2020''. All the world's records were held online, and a ComputerVirus scrambled all the data. It got to the point where the game is set in the year "303x", because all the calendars were scrambled too.

* In ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'', paper books are considered a rare collectable, as evidenced when Spock gives Kirk a printed copy of ''A Tale of Two Cities''.

The future is full of data drives, backups, often made of OrganicTechnology or [[CrystalSpiresAndTogas crystal]], and {{holographic terminal}}s. No paper though, even if we still have trees around. The danger of having [[NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup no hard copies]] of information seems lost on folks. This vision of an entirely digital future hearkens back to the 70s and 80s, when the increasing popularity of the home computer and email led many to believe that soon paper would be made obsolete by the ability to transfer and access hundred-page documents instantly on portable computing devices. Ironically, as the years went on the growing use of fax machines and printers meant paper was in higher demand than ever before. However by the 2000s the growing trends was towards everything being digital, and the rise of e-books threatens to make a No Paper Future a reality (despite the [[NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup no hard copies]] risks).

This whole trope presumes the complete elimination of the BlackMarket or illegal transactions, as, obviously, drug dealers are not going to be interested in transactions that leave a [[strike:paper]] data trail. Ditto for people arranging transactions to evade or avoid taxes or purchase something they'd [[PornStash rather not admit to]]; cash has no trail, electronic money does. But then the government decides how money is done, so who cares about the criminals? (Let's not dwell on the obvious answer to that question which is shown every time a news''paper'' presents news about political scandals involving large bribes...)

* ''GhostInTheShell'' has a near absence of all books and papers in physical form, to the point where libraries are only maintained as historical archives. When paper is seen, the text is often barcodes. In fact, the lack of physical hard copies of information becomes a plot point several times throughout the series. In a world where EverythingIsOnline, and skilled hackers lurk everywhere, how can you ''really'' be sure the records you're reading are the truth and not just a well-written fabrication?
* Mikuru the {{Time Travel}}ler from ''SuzumiyaHaruhi'' comes from a future where technology has gone very far beyond that of today. Accordingly, she has no concept of how to use 21st technology like laptops (it's not like most tropers would know how to use the ENIAC, after all). Most of the science fiction genre is even more alien to her, as it is {{Zeerust}} beyond recognition.
* ''CowboyBebop'' keeps the paper, but apparently mostly gets rid of paper money. Outside of a betting pool being run in the episode "Heavy Metal Queen", physical cash is never seen. Whenever the people pay, they use credit cards. One episode featured not only a set of criminals who had hacked their way into the paperless money system by planting a virus in the automated hyperspace gate toll system that robbed people blind as they passed, but also had an executive with the company annoyed that some of those defrauded sent in complaints on paper letters, something he considered "harassment, it's a waste of resources". Though they were on Mars...
* The sufficiently future setting of ''SkyGirls'' has normal computers and papers...that has a scrolling function much like flexible, ultrathin tablet [=PCs=].

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* The 30th century depicted in DC's ''Comicbook/{{Legion of Super-Heroes}}'' is generally paperless. In the BeachEpisode issue ''Legionnaires'' #77, when the Legion visits a resort planet, one character remarks on the "old-fashioned paper money" she's received for her winnings in a casino.

* ''StarWars'', at least in the movies, as pointed out in [[http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0159.html this]] ''DarthsAndDroids'' strip. There is absolutely no paper in the ''StarWars'' universe; even flat-panel displays are a rarity, mostly reserved for space ship cockpits. Instead most of the communication and information-storage is done with holograms.
** One deleted scene from ''TheEmpireStrikesBack'' shows that the Rebels used a warning on paper stuck on a door that leads to a room in which they had trapped a Wampa. As the main characters escape the base, Threepio rips off the paper so the Stormtroopers will barge in there unaware. The scene was cut because of this trope.

** In StarWarsTheOldRepublic, there is a quest on Taris about ownership of a certain piece of land. One of the sides claims they have a deed for that land ancient enough to be in printed form.

* In many end times novels based on Christian eschtalogy (especially Darbyist varieties), like ''LeftBehind'', it is always a given that the economy is being moved in this direction, so as to make the implementation of TheMarkOfTheBeast easier, due to a line in the Literature/TheBible about one needing to have a mark on the head or right hand present to buy or sell, thus obviating the need for paper money.

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

** Its spinoff, ''{{Caprica}}'' follows the ''{{Firefly}}'' example mentioned below: Ordinary paper is commonplace but people also frequently use devices called e-sheets. These super-thin PDA like devices feature touchscreens, can be folded like paper sheets, used to take notes, leave messages and send e-mails and are apparently quite cheap.

* The AlternateUniverse in ''{{Fringe}}'' is this way to the point that a ballpoint pen becomes the most exotic thing about a crime scene. It eventually leads the Fringe Division to a hospital where patients can't reliably use computers and therefore given pens and paper.

* In ''StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', e-books rule the day, except for Picard's prized printed edition of Shakespeare, which takes pride of place in his office.

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* ''MassEffect'' states that both paper money and electronic money exist, but electronic money is generally preferred, due to aforementioned illegal activity that's done with paper money.

** In ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', there will be paper books in Kasumi's room, which she seems rather embarrassed about.

* In ''SecretOfEvermore'', the Omnitopia biome uses "credits" as its currency instead of paper money, though the whole game technically doesn't use paper money since Talons, Jewels and Gold are not paper either.
* MegaManStarForce has an odd semi-aversion of this: while money is all digital (zenny is a number on your transer), but a lot of data is on scannable cards, mostly battle weapons (replacing chips from Battle Network) and what are left of Net Navis.

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* One ''RobotChicken'' skit had [[{{Superman}} Clark Kent]] out of a job as the Daily Planet became an app and had slashed the staff.

[[folder: Real Life ]]

** [[LandDownunder Australia]] and {{Romania}} have already eliminated paper money... in favor of plastic banknotes. [[CanadaEh Canada]] also plans to do so starting in late 2011.

* In MargaretAtwood's ''TheHandmaidsTale'', TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, paper still exists but paper money disappeared before the dystopia came into existence. It actually made things a lot easier when it was suddenly decided that women could not own property or have a job.

** [[DownUnder Australia]] and {{Romania}} have already eliminated paper money... in favor of plastic banknotes. [[CanadaEh Canada]] also plans to do so starting in late 2011.

* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'' features a future mostly devoid of paperwork and money, with "cred cards" as the standard form of currency. The spinoff series, TheZetaProject, has the titular robot equipped with a card that can generate unlimited money, which often becomes a plot point.