Hello all,
I am pleased to announce the publication of my book, Burdens of Proof,
at the MIT Press, which might be of some interest to both researchers
and professionals on this list. For more information, you can take a
peek online at the first 50 pages or peruse a summary of the book on
my site.
Links:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12838
http://wdn.ipublishcentral.net/mit/viewinside/33769409589453
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/blanchette/bop/
-- Book flap ---
The gradual disappearance of paper and its familiar evidential
qualities affects almost every dimension of contemporary life. From
health records to ballots, almost all documents are now digitized at
some point of their life cycle, easily copied, altered, and
distributed. In Burdens of Proof, Jean-François Blanchette examines
the challenge of defining a new evidentiary framework for electronic
documents, focusing on the design of a digital equivalent to
handwritten signatures.
From the blackboards of mathematicians to the halls of legislative
assemblies, Blanchette traces the path of such an equivalent: digital
signatures based on the mathematics of public-key cryptography. In the
mid-1990s, cryptographic signatures formed the centerpiece of a
worldwide wave of legal reform and of an ambitious cryptographic
research agenda that sought to build privacy, anonymity, and
accountability into the very infrastructure of the Internet. Yet
markets for cryptographic products collapsed in the aftermath of the
dot-com boom and bust along with cryptography's social projects.
Blanchette describes the trials of French bureaucracies as they
wrestled with the application of electronic signatures to real estate
contracts, birth certificates, and land titles, and tracks the
convoluted paths through which electronic documents acquire moral
authority. These paths suggest that the material world need not merely
succumb to the virtual but, rather, can usefully inspire it. Indeed,
Blanchette argues, in renewing their engagement with the material
world, cryptographers might also find the key to broader acceptance of
their design goals.
-- Endorsements --
"Jean-François Blanchette has written more than the history of
electronic signatures; this is a masterful account of how---as we
enter the digital age---our ideas of authenticity remain solidly
anchored in our analog past. What emerges is a gripping tale, untold
so far, of high aspirations, dashed hopes, and an epic struggle.
Uncovering why and how digital technologies fail to change professions
and society, Burdens of Proof is a truly important book."
-- Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Oxford Internet Institute
"This book is a wonderful weave of social and technical analysis of
the history of cryptography, unified by a passion for exploring the
material nature of computers. With grace and wit, Blanchette has
produced a work which makes a major contribution to our understanding
of complex configurations of the virtual and the real."
-- Geoffrey C. Bowker, Department of Informatics, University of
California, Irvine
"A technology guaranteeing the authority of electronic documents would
appear an essential tool of the digital age, which is why there is so
much to learn from the failure to develop one. Jean-François
Blanchette shows that understanding this failure requires addressing
the historical evolution of contemporary cryptography and the legal
concerns such a technology raises, together with a fearsome array of
contextual issues ranging from state power to the materiality of
mathematics. In contrast with the parochialism of much contemporary
academia, Blanchette explains these events through an exemplary
embrace of the requisite skills of a polymath."
-- Daniel Miller, Professor of Material Culture, University College
London
--
Jean-François Blanchette, Assistant Professeur
Department of Information Studies, UCLA
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/blanchette/
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