I was studying [Al Williams]’ terrific rant on why sometimes the public adoption of tech moves so slowly and gradually, as exemplified by the Japanese Minister of Tech requesting the conclude of submissions to the federal government on floppy diskettes. In 2022!
Alongside the way, [Al] factors out that we even now trust ballpoint-pen-on-paper signatures additional than digital kinds. Imagine going to a financial institution and staying in a position to open up an account with your authentication token! It would be tons much more protected, verifiable, and much easier to shop. It will make feeling in each individual way. Other than, unless you’ve needed one particular for function, you likely never have a Fido2 (or whatsoever) token, do you?
Identical goes for signed, or encrypted, e-mail. If you are a massive cryptography geek, you almost certainly have a GPG key. You may possibly even have a mail reader that supports it. But test requesting an encrypted concept from a standard man or woman. Or question them to validate a signature.
Truthfully, signing and encrypting are primarily each solved problems, from a complex standpoint, and for a very long time. But someway, from a societal place of see, we’re not even near however. Community vital encryption dates back again to the late 1970’s, and 3.5” diskettes are at minimum a decade youthful. Diskettes are now out of date, but I nevertheless can’t indication a lawful doc with my GPG vital. What gives?
