Kitcatt Nohr Digitas

According to the latest estimates, there are 10 billion paper business cards in circulation in the world. That is a) more than one for all of the people currently struggling to find a space to live on our crowded planet and b) a total waste of money/resources/time. (At roughly a millimetre thick, I reckon 10 billion cards would stretch from my desk to the edge of space.)

Actually, there are about one of those 10 billion cards in the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet. Some of them are my own, because I often forget to take them with me. Many more of them belong to other people. Some of those are people I would like to contact, but I can't, because I can't find their business card in the immense pile. Some of those are people I never want to see or hear from again in my entire life, but I don't know how to avoid them, because I can't find their business card. (I'm not being rude, but a lot of people give me their business cards, and I'd rather they didn't have to waste their and my time and their money.)

This seems a less than ideal state of affairs, but there's never been a way round it. The whole process of retaining the information you needed from the people with whom you wanted to be in touch professionally involved a staggeringly high level of redundancy. A whole drawer full of cards might contain a couple of gems.

Now, of course, you might say that with a little application, I could have typed in the details from the worthwhile business cards and recycled the rest when I received them. But I don't believe that anyone actually does that – not if the empty Rolodexes on the desks around me, anyway.

And now I don't need to. (I hope.)

It's all thanks to the wonders of modern technology, of course.

There have been a couple of business card apps available for a while. Bump was quite popular, but unless both of you had the app, then it wouldn't get over the problem. There was also one for iPhone that I tried but that didn't seem to work. (A glitch, according to the developer). Now, there's one that LinkedIn have developed. It's called CardMunch and it's really very simple. You line up the business card you've been given, click submit, and an army of human beings scan it, crop it and add it to a 'virtual Rolodex'. Of course, it still leaves you with a business card that could easily end up in the bottom drawer of your filing cabinet. But you could always give it straight back to the person who gave you it – so they'd only ever need one card. (And of course, all the details end up stored in your LinkedIn page, which is nice.)

So don't be offended if I give you your business card back when you meet me. It really isn't personal.