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/

Contact the list owner for assistance at [log in to unmask]

For information about joining, leaving and suspending mail (eg during a holiday) see the list website at
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=archives-nra