If they don’t, future generations will never know the year in which certain motion pictures were copyrighted!
Roman numerals!? They didn’t even try to teach that to us.
You are technically correct (the best kind of correct), but nevertheless “digital signature” is commonly used in place of “electronic signature” (which includes both digital signatures and scanned handwritten signatures as a subset).
Still, that page defines the word as I was using it, which is important to understanding what I was saying in the post.
Eat fecal matter and get indigestion, Derleth. 
What? Can you explain this sudden and incomprehensible hostility?
All I’m saying is, any brief explanation of what digital signatures are would involve technical terms which, if you understood them, would render the brief explanation superfluous. It would be like defining a “house cat” as a “domesticated Felis catus which lives in a house”.
Somewhat ironically, since scanned handwritten signatures probably take the honours as “least secure means of identification possible.”
When I suggested that people will sign their names digitally, did you genuinely suffer any confusion about what I meant, that maybe I meant they would engage in an activity of mathematical cryptography? or did you just see a chance to misinterpret me and score points?
In any case, you wrote that they are “potentially secure, so don’t expect them to be legally or socially acceptable any time soon.” That sentence would make a lot more sense if you meant to write “potentially insecure,” but I’m not sure if that’s what you intended, which is why I asked for clarification. If that’s not what you meant, perhaps you could explain why security leads to lack of social acceptance, if that’s not beyond the bounds of GQ.
A large portion of the first, second, and third world carries cell phones which are perfectly capable of digitally signing a document.
I don’t know why you want to accuse me of trolling when actual digital signatures are both well-proven technology and well within the capacity of the average person these days. It’s like going off on someone who assumes that owning a radio is no big deal.
Because faxes with scrawled by-hand cursive signatures are still considered legally “better” in relevant ways than emails with digital signatures, that’s why. They’re worse in literally every respect from a security standpoint, but the secure option is legally inadmissible in relevant contexts.
“Cursive” is kind of a vague term here. Does the OP mean writing that’s not simply block printing? Or does he/she mean “penmanship,” as taught to me in Catholic school in the early sixties?
Anyway, I don’t think a technique that allows one to write quickly and legibly is ever going to become obsolete.
Good lord, Derleth. I’m not accusing you of trolling. I’m trying to figure out what you’re trying to say. Was your post that I responded to agreeing with me? Your point is pretty unclear, unless it’s a general gripe about Luddite tendencies among lawmakers or something.
The OP seems to be assuming that older people who know cursive all sign their name is cursive. They don’t. I’d estimate about 1/4 of my patients over 65 don’t sign in cursive. They have a consistent signature that involves at least some of the letters in their name, but it’s a combination of printing and scribbles.
It is an interesting question, though. My generation certainly (wrongly) believes that you have to sign in cursive. I’ll have to ask my 11 year old tomorrow how she signs her name. I actually have no idea.
I write cursive well enough, and do use it occasionally. My signature is in cursive except for the last two letters of my last name, which are stylized block printing. You wouldn’t know that from looking at it, I don’t think. And I have no idea why my signature came to be that specific composition.
A few months ago, I accompanied my autistic nephew, who’d just turned 18, to the first doctor’s appointment he’d ever gone to without mom (she was at work that day). I gave the new young adult the forms, which he dutifully filled in by himself, until he got to the signature line and told me “I don’t know how to do that kind of writing.” A bit nonplussed, I told him to just print his name.
I bolded what I believe he meant. It was just a cynical quip about how new technology that is better gets ignored, while old, insecure technology is treated as sacrosanct.
I’m not sure what is causing the breakdown in communication on either side.
The world has changed.
I feel it in the water.
I feel it in the earth.
And I smell it in the air.
Much that once was, is lost,
for none now live who remember it.
. . . some things that should not have been forgotten, were lost.
I was amazed to see the OP. Not because of the question about signatures but because years ago I remember reading that learning cursive was important for various developmental reasons. I assumed at the time people would rally to prevent it being dropped since research showed benefits in teaching it. Here is Psychology Today on the subject.
Maybe there’s something else they could teach that would improve brain function even more than handwriting. Say, algebra…
It sounds like the person who wrote that article just doesn’t understand how writing works if you don’t use cursive:
“Printing” only works that way (with prim-and-proper straight lines each written in a separate movement) if you don’t do it much.
I had to learn cursive as a child and later in junior high I took a drafting class where they taught me to write in a manor that allowed for people to easily read what I wrote. It is progress that the powers that be have decided to tech legible writing earlier in life.