The present, as they say, is built upon the past.

In this modern world of on-demand media, constant connectivity and near-instantaneous communications, our society’s foundations in the past can often be too easily forgotten.

Sometimes, it takes a particularly notable series of events, trend, personality or entity to force us to re-examine those foundations, and compel us to ask why we do things – from business transactions to social interactions – the way we do them.

Concerns raised recently – both here in Massachusetts and elsewhere – regarding the nationwide Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS), and its practice of centralizing legal custody of mortgages under a single entity, represent one of those kinds of instances.

On the surface, registries of deeds may seem like one of those persistent relics from a bygone era, an institution stumbling forward into the 21st century largely under the weight of its own inertia, rather than any special kind of relevance. The local register might be a handy guy to have at cocktail parties – replete, as he is, with all the gossip on who’s coming and going in town, and what they paid for their kingdoms – but he doesn’t seem all that crucial to the everyday concerns of our growing communities.

A registry, and by extension its given register, is simply that: A centralized, public accounting of all real property in a town or county, including boundaries, ownership and financing records for said properties.

But it really isn’t that simple, of course. Property ownership – literally, owning a piece of this green Earth as solely one’s own – is amazingly complex, both in concept and in practice. Our deeds establish boundaries and give us the legal right to stop our neighbors from bulldozing the tree that’s just on our side of the property line. Titles are what allow us to prove ownership over our domains, large and small. Notes and mortgages are public records both of debts owed and legal rights to foreclose in the event of nonpayment of said debt. Land records are tangible documentations of a physical piece of land’s history – from the treaty that first established ownership, to the various subdivisions, easements, acquisitions and transactions leading a parcel to look the way it does today.

All are housed at your local registry.

These public records can be cumbersome, of course, containing as they do literally centuries of historical data. One could also call the function of a public property registry rather burdensome, with its associated fees, paperwork and bureaucracy.

But one should never call these registries unnecessary. Especially in the event something goes wrong or is called into question.

In these cases, the kinds of clear, indisputable records of events and parties involved found in local registries are of vital importance – a precise and binding documentation of how a property went from party A to party B… or Z, as the case may be these days.

Which is why the ongoing MERS debate is so important. MERS was created to simplify the recording process for its members. But in that act of simplification, it seems the clear, binding record of property conveyance – upon which our whole property ownership system is based – was muddied, at best, and neglected at worst.

The legal arguments surrounding local MERS cases are probably best left to sharper legal minds than our own.

But there’s something more important at stake than the arguments over money owed or not owed. What we hope is that increased public discussion of these disputes will lead to overall increased public awareness of the importance of property registration in general. A greater understanding of why we register this information in the first place, and of what, exactly, is being registered, will help us all understand how a centuries-old practice is still just as critical today as it was in the colonial era.

It’s not just for cocktail party entertainment.