We Need Notaries the Way We Do Phone Booths
Some
outmoded functions and technologies are still worth having around, even if just
for nostalgic reasons. This isn't one of them.
BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH
INVESTORS@TULLMAN
Image: Getty Images. Illustration: Inc. Magazine
In a commercial and legal world of
transactions dominated by DocuSign, where we're increasingly reliant upon the
speed, ease, reliability and cost effectiveness of digital signatures, you have
to wonder why we would ever again need to seek the last notary public in the
neighborhood, or some glass-entombed mope downtown at a currency exchange
to have them validate a signature on some stupid pro forma document for a
real estate closing, title certificate or other such
documents.
Notaries are state-licensed independent
witnesses, with no other credentials or required skills who once played a
functional role in validating everyday commerce -- certifying that the signatories
to legal documents were who they claimed to be, were physically present at the
signing, and acting of their own volition. This helped ensure that necessary
parties to wills, deeds, insurance policies and other such contracts could be
later verified and called, if required, to affirm the signatures which
theoretically reduced the potential for fraud and coercion.
Today, notaries are as useful as 19th century
scriveners. And just as hard to find. Maybe you've had to make one of
these pointless pilgrimages lately. You go searching for an antiquated clerk
who still has the magic seal and a stamp and who, as often as not, is also
willing to acknowledge the presence and signatures of spouses and witnesses who
just couldn't be bothered to make the trip with you. If not, your time will
come soon enough, until we finally come to our senses and add this futile act
to the junk pile of history. I don't begrudge these folks their $5 notary
fee. Heck, I'd pay them double if I didn't have to go through the useless
motions and waste the time.
Honestly, I don't really have it in for
notaries. What bothers me is how random and inexplicable it seems when we look
around and see what's rapidly disappearing from our day-to-day lives as opposed
to what seems to persist for no good rhyme or reason. This is not to say that
there aren't plenty of things that we're still doing - anything and everything
to do with DMVs and renewing passports comes to mind - that I'd rather miss a
bit and think fondly of than have to keep on doing every day.
And, of course, I recognize that every time
something we've suffered through for what seems like a lifetime disappears, it
theoretically creates new opportunities for eager entrepreneurs to provide
alternative solutions, which are sometimes useful and valuable. I am pretty
certain, however, that I'll never need a Bluetooth-enabled toothbrush to manage my
oral hygiene.
Notwithstanding the dozens of daily robocalls
and sleazy solicitations on my landline phone, for example, I can tell you that
I wouldn't want to shut it off entirely and then be racing around in the middle
of the night trying to find my cell phone to call in a fire or summon an
ambulance. There's something stolid and very reassuring about that Ma Bell
phone mounted on the wall or sitting right beside the bed.
Similarly, I'd add old-fashioned, relatively
reasonably priced taxicabs to the list of sunset services that we're gonna miss
as we get increasingly gouged and ripped off every day by Uber and Lyft. You
could once hail a cab in most major cities to get you quickly, safely, and
economically to where you needed to go. Now the whole process is a Hail Mary at
best and typically ends up with a charge that's about what you'd pay for a
week's groceries at the supermarket.
And, as stinky as they may be, we're likely to
see a return to cloth diapers one of these days when it becomes unavoidably
obvious that we're polluting the country by stuffing zillions of
"disposable" plastic Pampers into overflowing landfills, which are
getting closer and closer to our own backyards and leaking their way into our
water supplies.
Paper towels aren't much better and at least
as wasteful. But here at least a new Chicago-based startup
called Yowell has a simple
solution, which substitutes reusable, eco-friendly, machine-washable towels (in
a simple countertop dispenser) for the millions of paper sheets we use and
discard every day. Back to the future looks better all the time.
Banks with human tellers are on their last
legs, paper checks are on the way out as well - in part because we're not
teaching kids to write any more, so they can't prepare a check or sign their
names in cursive. Free-standing banks are also gonna be a thing of the distant
past pretty soon. We'll see more and more of the banks creating fully automated
storefront outlets that will compete with CBD shops and COVID-19 testing
centers to take over vacant retail spaces, nail salons and bookstores in
struggling strip malls and on suburban main streets while their main bank
facilities retreat to fill spaces in newly empty commercial office
buildings.
Matches and matchbooks, postcards and travel
souvenirs, old photographs and albums, collectibles of every size and shape in
an increasingly transitory and digital world that's come to value access and
utility over possession and ownership. Every year, as we think we're
accumulating more and more, we're actually owning less and less. We've become -
whether we realize it or not - a world of renters.
Digital books, cloud-stored media and, of
course, music are just the beginning of a new era where we have the right to
access and use things rather than to fully own and possess them as long as
we're willing to continue to "subscribe" and pay the going rate. Get
off the auto-pay merry-go-round for a moment and everything disappears in a
flash. And, while you can "own" crypto currencies for the moment
and NFTs, which will soon be worthless pieces of digital memento mori,
such illusory possessions are merely evidence of your ongoing membership in the
greater fool club.
As Billy Joel would say "life is a series
of hellos and goodbyes" and, while I'd be perfectly happy to never again
be standing in line at the post office to do anything, there are things
vanishing all the time that I know we'll eventually miss although--far too
often-- we don't really appreciate them until they're long gone. Notaries, TSA
agents, and insurance salesmen won't be among them.
NOV 2, 2021
