Contracts create obligations. Obligations can be substituted with penalties. "We will attempt to acquire you. If we can't, we pay you a breakup fee."
If you had formal contracts around informal things like babysitting, you'd end up requiring licensed and bonded babysitters. "Henceforth, unto be known, babysitting shall commence at 1500 on Thursday, June 22, in the year of our lord 2014. Unto forthwith, inability to sit for baby will result in a $1 (one) million dollar ($) penalty payable in DOGE."
Not sure how "forming a coffee club" requires a contract unless "gourmet coffee" is code for "meth distribution."
Not sure what the disconnect is. Everything is a "meatspace activity," but we still have contracts around big things (buying a house, employment, warranties, ...).
Are you asking "how does the software contract get written?" Well, somebody writes it. "Contract programmers," heh.
Yes contracts are meatspace focused, but meatspace isn't object oriented only because it is obscured by the observer right now - more the legislative bodies behind law than the practicing attorneys or the parties to contracts.
With the entrance of pure theory and object oriented worldviews necessary to "open the eyes of the machine" onto what's going on in what it's tracking and providing an environment for, the programmers and administrators of legal systems can finally remake law in the image of reason, and not the obfuscations which tainted reason early on that we have now.
