With three more days to go at work in New Zealand, I am just going through my office files working out what I need to take with me and what needs to be dumped…

It would not have been so many years ago, that moving all my microbiology files, old research papers, presentations, textbooks, journals, etc etc would have required several cardboard boxes.

Now I am going to walk out of my office with a USB stick attached to my key ring, a memory “USB credit card” in my wallet, and everything backed up on “Google Drive“.

The days of needing to haul around cardboard boxes are more or less gone, but for those of us of a certain age, we sometimes forget that this is even possible….

The power to store information digitally is now quite staggering. I will thus be ruthless with the remaining paper files in my office, safe in the knowledge that I am not leaving anything behind…

For a wandering microbiologist like myself, paperless travelling is the way to go….

Michael