trusted email, eh? (Score 1)

Techno babble forsooth! Enough. This is not really an issue of supporting technology or of the general public's trust of that technology. The rules of trust are the same, no matter the media. I use email extensively for business. I trust emails that are: 1). from a known source. 2). within the context of our current ongoing discussions, etc. 3). reasonably accurate in it's presentation of facts. These same criteria apply to snail-mail, fax, email, voice messages, all of it. But I don't use those methods, in that manner, to document a contract for work. Our concepts of developing trust around a contract trace back to ancient customs. Way back when, before cell phones even, 3 copies of a contract were written. These were certified to be identical, witnessed, and one copy was sealed inside a jar. The sealed copy could be brought out (by breaking the jar) in the event that there was a dispute. (Like, say, someone had altered the contract.) Do these things sound familiar? Sure. We do similar things every day. Keep in mind, many people in our world can't read. They depend upon the reliability of witnesses to establish trust. How do we make email useful for contracts? Easy. provide a means to: 1). duplicate the contracts. 2). "seal up" one copy in a secure location. (can we say encryption?) 3). provide a permanent, meaningful way to reference each copy to the sealed copy. (i.e. no email contract could be valid without a reference signature that would uniquely identify the contract and all copies.) Then people will trust the email, and they won't care what media it was written on. IMHO.