Please Come In to Sign

Classes had moved online. Meetings had moved online. Documents traveled by email, and electronic signatures already existed.

Then came the instruction:

Please come in.

A physical signature was still required.

In the middle of remote life, the institution had managed to create a process that was digital everywhere except at the exact point where a person needed to remain at home.

The contradiction was almost elegant.

The problem was not the absence of technology. The technology was there. The old process had simply survived underneath it.

A document could move electronically until somebody printed it. A meeting could be remote until someone decided that a particular conversation had to happen in a room. The screen changed, but authority still seemed to live in paper and physical presence.

That was what the pandemic exposed so clearly.

Before, an unnecessary trip was merely inconvenient. Now every trip asked a sharper question: why must this person be here?

Sometimes there was a good answer.

Sometimes the answer was only that the procedure had always required it.

Institutions are remarkably good at keeping old rituals alive inside new systems. They can buy new software while protecting the same habits, like placing a modern machine around an antique lever and insisting the lever is still essential.

Remote education had arrived.

Electronic signatures had arrived.

The future was functioning.

It still wanted me to come in and sign.