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Electronic Registrythe explosion of Gutenbergs Galaxy and the electronic foliumSrgio Jacomino*

Brazilian Public Registrars have found themselves at a terrible crossroads.

Pressured by economic and social need and reflecting an unsupressable trend, Registry

Services in Brazil find themselves about to abandon the traditional atomized model ofinstitutional organization inherited from the model conceived in the second half of the 19

th

century, and adopt a model that moleculizes the system.

This change is a repercussion of a transformation in the means of fixating registry information.

The informational architecture of public registries, which is very traditional, will change

substantially. We are rapidly abandoning the paradigm of paper-based registry, rushing through

the intermediate phase of network computing (client/server) to delve into the brave new world of

cloud computing and the consequent interconnection of public registries. With information

migrating from the traditional foliato specialized databases, the cloaks of information will be

shed to disclose gigantic portals that will transport public registries to new levels and directly

into the 21st

century. This change represents myriad challenges and great opportunities.

Electronic means tend to conform their own content. Marshal McLuhans phrase is well-known:

the medium is the message. Technology is shaping a new Public Registry. Just as the invention

of an admirable new world without the nautical marvels of Saracenic , Jewish and Christian

cartographers congregated at the School of Sagres would have been impossible, so will it be

impossible to colonize cyberspace without precise cartography, the work of professionals

directly involved in the act of registry: real estate registrars themselves. This task is non-

delegable.

But what do these professionals have to say with respect to the new electronic means and their

impacts on their unique activity?

Nothing will remain of the traditional foliaof titles, with information connected in narrative

discourse of natural language, as it is changed to structured Registry, but linguistic debris. The

registry will be structured and the inscription will be made based on the tendencies designated

by information technology.

Like all transformation, the progressive destructuring/restructuring of real estate registry

according to technological imperative could lead to equivocal concepts in the formation of a new

registry system.

The process is replete with familiar difficulties. We run the risk of conceiving the Electronic

Registry as merely a homologous reproduction of traditional inscriptions. But the phenomenon I

have called McLuhans syndromecould occur: the impact of new technologies, especially theavailability of new electronic means such as cloud computing tending to shape the registries

themselves, giving them a new dimension. This could lead us, however, to the repetition of

equivocations like the specular effects of traditional registries replicated by digital means. The

material limitations that hindered previous media are transported to new digital media in new,

richer ways.

Marshall McLuhan studied some of these interesting phenomena in his book Understanding

Media - The Extensions of Man(Cambridge: MIT, 1994. 365p.). The following passage

synthesizes the phenomenon well: all forms of transportation (and digital means are nothing

more than hot means of informational transport) not only conduct, but translate and transform

the transmitter, the receptor and the message:

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Each form of transport not only carries, but translates and transforms, the sender, the

receiver, and the message. The use of any kind of medium or extension of man alters the

patterns or interdependence among people, as it alters the ratios among our senses" (p.

90).

The medium is the message. Electronic means, supporting our known registries and

inscriptions, will tend to transform them substantially. The content of our digital means,

however, can come to constitute themselves in other mediain the case of old registry books

replicated homologicallyunless we perceive their substantially distinct nature and can thereby

break old paradigms.

In short, new electronic media will give birth to a new Real Estate Registry

Are you ready?

* Srgio Jacomino. Former chief registrar in Brasil. Phd. Civil law.