What question did this study set out to answer?

The essay discusses the evolution of public-key infrastructure in national identity systems and the need for a field-theoretic approach.

May 27, 2026Open Access

View Full Paper

The Field We Forgot to Name: A Practitioner's Note on Trust as Physics, Not Plumbing

ASAnton SokolovTallinn University

Key Points

The essay discusses the evolution of public-key infrastructure in national identity systems and the need for a field-theoretic approach.
Practitioner-register essay
Analysis of operational work in public-key infrastructure
Discussion of structural properties like locality and gauge invariance.
Identifies the shift from traditional plumbing views to field concepts in public-key infrastructure.
Defends three key structural properties for regulators: locality, gauge invariance, and conservation.
Cautions against relying on registry-based frameworks instead of field equations.

Abstract

A practitioner-register essay on why public-key infrastructure has, over two decades of operational work in national identity systems, stopped looking like plumbing and started looking like a field. The essay defends three structural properties that field-theoretic thinking gives the regulator — locality, gauge invariance, conservation — and warns against an eAIDAS that arrives by registry rather than by field equation. Submitted to First Monday on 25 May 2026 as a companion to Unified Postquantum Trust Field Theory.

Ask AI

Helpful

Bookmark

View Full Paper

Ask AI

Helpful

Bookmark

View Full Paper

The Field We Forgot to Name: A Practitioner's Note on Trust as Physics, Not Plumbing

Key Points

Abstract

Cite This Study

Also Consider

Also Consider