At 5:38 PM -0700 11/25/97, Anonymous wrote:
There is a widely held belief that cryptoanarchy is an all or nothing proposition; that is, the future can be a glorious cryptoanarchy or a dismal police state. (I think this is Tim May's analysis, but perhaps others also contributed.)
This is a common misunderstanding of what I (and others) have written. In particular, as just one item of many, I've never predicted that there will be some kind of overall "anarchy" (as normally understood, even in the anarcho-capitalist sense). Rather, I have predicted (correctly, so far) that certain people, certain organizations, certain entities will use the new "degrees of freedom" in anonymous, pseudonymous, untraceable, unsurveillable communications systems to bypass laws, mores, and dominant institutions. As we are seeing every day, more and more. The effect is to to create an environment without government intrusion. This is what I call crypto anarchy.
It isn't clear to me that these two environments cannot co-exist in a stable equilibrium. Historically, in many societies which practiced slavery, large numbers of people were neither slaves nor slave owners.
Sure, and I've said the same thing many times. The governments of the world are cracking down on "illegal thoughts," and illegal vegetables, illegal defense items, illegal television programs, and on and on. At the same time, bootleg channels are proliferating, copyright is being skirted, money laundering is exploding, and on and on. The crackdown has the effect of making the sheeple even more obedient and making the adventurers (the wolves?) even bolder. Technology works for those who use it. Very Nietzscheian. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."