Real / Digital World Analogy
Real world credentials are a diverse social phenomenon, and as such are difficult to define. As with digital signatures it is misleading to assume a direct correspondence between the real-world and the digital concept. This holds even if defining criteria for credentials in the digital world could be agreed on.
The success of digital signatures as a replacement for paper based signatures has lagged behind expectations. On the other hand many unexpected uses of digital signatures were discovered by recent cryptographic research. A related insight that can be learned from digital signatures is that the cryptographic mechanism need not be confused with overall process that turns a digital signature into something that has more or less the same properties as a paper based signature. Electronic signatures such as paper signatures sent by fax may have legal meaning, while secure cryptographic signatures may serve completely different purposes. We need to distinguish the algorithm from the process.
Read more about this topic: Digital Credential
Famous quotes containing the words real, world and/or analogy:
“Somewhere along the line of development we discover who we really are, and then we make our real decision for which we are responsible. Make that decision primarily for yourself because you can never really live anyone else’s life not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life and what you become yourself.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“There is nothing in the world I hold in greater horror than to see a body moving against its head: and I shall be very careful not to ally myself with such a monster.”
—Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
“The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.”
—Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)