Late reply I know. But as I like to repeat, in the credit card world there's little or no reference to meatspace per se. In the vast majority of card defaults no real-world collateral is taken: It's more often than not written off, but one's reputation is damaged for seven years. Commercial cards are the same, even more so: They are 'uncollateralized' short term loans. As the population increases and physical world collateral goes to zero, seems to me the only thing many humans will "own" is their reputation: Their physical world assets will be uninteresting or negligible. Is this the same thing as anonymity? Of course, many folks will have many reputations and will choose to burn one every now and then to cash in or take a big risk. But even now it's possible to detect when a reputation is about to blow and so any loans are quickly ramped down. -TD
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2009 08:36:40 -0500 From: roy@rant-central.com To: teddks@gmail.com CC: cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net Subject: Re: managing and protecting nyms...
Ted Smith wrote:
On Fri, 2009-11-06 at 15:59 -0500, Roy M. Silvernail wrote:
Hey, it's great to relive the classics! :)
And it's great to have a front-row seat to the replay, for us second-generation cypherpunks who never saw the original!
Second-generation? Man, do I feel old!
Detweiler's rantings may not be fully accurate, but they do serve to outline the basic ideas of pseudonymity. They're worth a visit, if only for some historical perspective.
http://sattlers.org/mickey/culture/humor/items/Geekish/theoryOfNymity.html
As well, Tim May's Cyphernomicon has some good info about reputation capital.
https://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/chapter15.html
Cory Docterow calls reputation capital "Whuffie", and goes into some detail on how it might work (assuming a slightly sci-fi infrastructure in the bargain).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie
Even without Docterow's Whuffie meter, repcap exists today. There are quite a few nyms that I trust to be reputable, even though I've never met them in person and don't know their True Names.
Welcome to the Other Plane. -- Roy M. Silvernail is roy@rant-central.com, and you're not "It's just this little chromium switch, here." - TFT http://www.rant-central.com
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