The Pathway to a Digital Deed.

Book excerpt: The idea of making a deal with a handshake—what we generally call an incomplete contract—makes most of us uncomfortable. While complete contracts are inevitably imperfect; electronic signatures represent legal trickery, which produces incomplete contracts. The legal system via electronic signatures has conjured up a set of unknowables, technical inept, and incomplete set of legal experimentation, which seeks to produce incomplete and legally reputable contracts and agreements. Signatures don’t work very well in a vacuum, and only have meaning when existing alongside something else, the faith we have in the meaning of signatures stems from the mechanisms involved in the use of paper. Electronic signatures are a question of understanding an unknowable technology. Bruce Schneier - a renowned cryptologist - once wrote that “electronic signature” probably is the greatest terminological mistake in the history of cryptology. THROUGHOUT HUMAN HISTORY A SEAL APPLIED TO A PIECE OF PAPER AND LATTER A WET SIGNATURE REMAINS THE GOLD STANDARD OF INTENT AND NON-REPUDIATION.