What Do We Mean by Authentic?

Authenticity is among digital document security properties needing attention. Literature focused on preservation reveals uncertainty — even confusion — about what we might mean by authentic. The current article provides a definition that spans vernacular usage of "authentic", ranging from digital documents through material artifacts to natural objects. We accomplish this by modeling entity transmission through time and space by signal sequences and object representations at way stations, and by carefully distinguishing objective facts from subjective values and opinions. Our model can be used to clarify other words that denote information quality, such as "evidence", "essential", and "useful". Everyday language is a part of the human organism and is no less complicated than it ....The tacit conventions on which the understanding of everyday language depends are enormously complicated. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 4.002