DEMATERIALIZATION is a staple in many a sci-fi film: an object or person is zapped by a beam-gun and, poof, just disappears! This, though, is not mere fiction. Digitization has been, in effect, dematerializing things for quite a while, even if it does not make them disappear. Books and music on compact discs have been digitized for decades, transforming their physical form into bits and bytes: in a sense, dematerializing them. This, or sending documents in digital form after scanning them, has become so routine that we hardly think of it. Yet, digitization — which triggered disintermediation many. . .
