Forbes is on the attack again... and this time it is YOU, the title searcher, that is in their sights. 

Why Title Companies Hate Technology

A gem from the article-- it was hard to pick just one:

Now we have an exceedingly mature private property system, and most of the uncertainty has been removed from real estate. There are recorders, usually at a county level, that maintain property ownership records.  If you want to know who owns a piece of land, just grab the folder for it.

You have to read the whole thing, because there is more where that came from.

It is true, I believe, that technology has been misapplied and/or applied in patchwork fashion in land records offices and in the title industry.  A good article could have been written on that, but this ain't it. 

As a tech guy, I am not against "modern" land records systems that take greater advantage of computer power.  When I was looking into Torrens Title systems a few months ago, I looked into Australia's land title system-- based on a system of "smart" land records where title documents are verified at the time of receipt by the land records office, allowing the government to guarantee title and largely eliminating the role of the private title searcher and private title insurance--  which appears to make very good use of computer systems, and is much closer from a technology perspective, i believe, to an ideal land title system than the sytstems in most of the USA if you're talking about creating a land title system from scratch in 2010.  Problem is, converting from one system to another completely different system is an enormous undertaking-- consider that some land titles in Australia still have not been converted into the "new" system, even though the "new" system has been in place since the 1800s! 

In the absence of the ability of governments to make huge capital and labor investments in converting to more computer-friendly land records systems, the current system of "dumb" title records offices and title searches does function, more or less, in large part because all of you make it work.  It is not perfect, but to pretend that there's something better that can be easily had but that's being blocked by the title industry is ridiculous.