In actions that come under any of these terms, our purpose is commonly to bring the future into the present in some sense—a move that contract lawyers call presentiation. There may be some joint project or exchange that we cannot complete in this moment, but we might wish to secure our expectations about its future before we expend effort or resources now or make commitments in the future whose value will turn on completion. … As Luhmann (1980, 13) says, "Managing complex futures means corresponding performances by people in the continuous present." He then adds, "Trust is one of the ways of bringing this about." The addition is not quite right. We hope to bring it about by entrusting, contracting, or accepting a promise, by turning over some future part of our project to another or others. It is the turning over—that is, an action—that fits that hope.

DEFINE: Explains the contract-law concept of 'presentiation' — bringing the future into the present through commitments.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 335