Yet, some businesses -- and their employees -- still do use pens and papers, particularly for taking notes in meetings. Why do we capture crucial business information on a data storage medium invented 2,000 years ago? Pen-and-paper meeting notes represent a non-trivial exception to the rapid and profitable advancement in the application of computer systems to improve every aspect of business processes.

I believe there are three reasons why some people still capture meeting notes on paper:

1. It's a cultural habit. Behavior in meetings is governed by corporate and national culture, from how we exchange business cards to how we talk to what we wear. Pulling out a nice pen and taking notes on paper is part of that cultural habit.

2. The company doesn't care. The transition from paper to digital bits and bytes was all about bringing measurable improvements to business processes and the bottom line. Note taking is all about personal effectiveness, not the company's. So when it comes to note-taking technology, you're on your own. Few companies are likely to build electronic note-taking into the IT budget.

3. Every aspect of our "meetings culture" is broken, obsolete, inefficient and costly. We work hard at our desks, but tend to view meetings as long coffee breaks. where we can zone out, indulge the impulse to show off or play politics. Conversation tends to meander, rarely concluding with clear action items and completion deadlines. Letting all the decisions, ideas and information from meetings get lost on individual paper notepads is part of what makes meetings so time inefficient and cost ineffective.