Can we finally bid farewell to good old John Hancock?
Every now and then, usually in relation to some sorting out paperwork, we’re transported back to the last century and given the opportunity to reflect on the absurdity of practices we hold onto that should have disappeared a long time ago.
My particular bugbear is the signature. Does anybody really think, in the 21st century, that somebody’s signature at the bottom of a document means anything? Last week, while dealing with some paperwork, the notary public I was using nearly asked me to return to their office because they had forgotten to get me to sign a document. The idea being that somehow, a squiggle at the bottom of the page that for some reason, many many years ago, somebody had decided this proved who I was.
This is crazy. My signature proves absolutely nothing, and should have been eradicated a long time ago from law and business. I can change it whenever I want, it can be copied or falsified easily and has been digitized in the myriad of stores and screens where I still have to sign for purchases, and I can even deny having signed something. It is one of the weakest and most meaningless security measures ever invented, but for some absurd reason we invest it with supreme authority.
Signatures in the digital world are an anachronism: does anyone believe that the signature I made with my finger…
