I just turned 17 recently. On paper, it’s pretty much just like being 16 – with more wrinkles and college applications – but it feels bigger. It’s harder to ignore that next year, I’m going to be legally of age. I know people who are excited to get a tattoo, or buy cigarettes, or do something else to commemorate their emancipation. Me, I think I’d like to become a notary public.

What? It’s a perfectly valid goal. It seems useful, too, since so much paperwork requires notarization. An accreditation seems convenient, even though I couldn’t notarize my own documents.

As with many other paper traditions, the necessity of notarizing documents may become obsolete with the expansion of the web. There are services now where for $25 and questions designed to confirm an identity, online documents can be notarized in half an hour.

Good thing I’m not hanging my hat on notarizing as a career. I just think it would be neat. And it does seem like there are plenty of reasons the practice would persist.

One problem in the business world that’s grown to new heights because of the internet is fraud – which is a problem society has been solving since