Don’t. Trust. The. Cloud.
Why spiral binding? It is a relatively cheap and easy way to bind pages together to become a book.
It uses less material than a three ring binder while having more holes to secure the pages. You lose less material at the binding location compared with staples or screws. It doesn’t require expensive equipment that making a book requires, so you can make smaller runs.
I believe the point you brought forward with it being more secure is exactly why it’s asked for in a academic environment.
With a single staple a page in a 10 page report could be attributed to accidentally falling out, where with a spiral bound set its less likely a page will “mysteriously disappear”. A student will also less likely as to resubmit a paper because “a page was missing”.
Backups for when you don’t have access.
I feel a paper spiral bound book has a sense of finality to it that digital never will. You can’t half ass a section and be like “I’ll clean this up later.” By committing to a hard copy you are committing to a completed work and not some poorly formatted wiki or markdown page no one wants to read
Paper works without electricity and can be transferred from one person to another freely. Once said paper is in one’s possession, gatekeeping the information at a later point in time becomes impossible. Websites go down, networks go down, repos go down. Paper stays.
It’s almost impossoble to keep digital documentation up-to-date, let alone paper documentation.
The point of paper documentation isn’t to keep it up to date, but to be a snapshot of the time.
When you work in the paper industry.
When you have to make presentations to people who have more money than computer skills.
