I bought a car.

Which is to say, I sat at a desk and spent 90 (!) minutes signing my name on a dictionary-sized stack of papers. Government forms, title forms, odometer statements, financing contracts, etc etc.

And most of this signing was done on old carbon forms that were spit out of one of those 30 year old BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPP BRAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPP dot matrix printers. Really?

I’m sitting there using my (also very ancient) graduate education in Supply Chain management and thinking about how stupid it is that in 2016 I have to sign my name on this many pieces of paper spit out of a long-obsolete printer.

Think about it — I am using a plastic stick filled with dye built in China, then put on a diesel-spewing barge for a 10,000 mile trip across the pacific, to a port on the west coast, onto a train for its long trip to a warehouse somewhere, which then made its way onto another diesel-spewing truck, to land at an office supply store, and then finally made its way into this car dealership.

And that’s just the pen. Then there’s the paper. Somewhere there are trees being planted, likely in the northwest or Canada. Those trees will then be cut down by people using big saws, many of whom will lose fingers, or worse, to harvest these big trees. Those trees are then loaded onto large semis to be hauled to a mill to be processed into paper, and then loaded into boxes, then onto trucks and back to that office supply store.

So, in essence, I am writing my name in black dye onto a dead tree that grew 2,000 miles away, using a plastic stick built 12,000 miles away.

In 2016? Really?

The last time my kid got sick, a PA hundreds of miles away met us via video conference and diagnosed him and a prescription was ready at the pharmacy down the street within 15 minutes.

This is why I love companies like Docusign. Gen X and Millennials don’t want to sign their names in triplicate on carbon paper. It looks, and is, an ancient (literally, see pic below) process.