Re: RE: Digicash bankruptcy

Much of Digicash's problems came about as a result of its inventors worldview and dreams. These primary problems were caused by the same factors that created the impetus for their development. The business constraints that David Chaum attempted to impose on everyone interested in his technology included social theory driven restrictions. He really wanted to change not only how future payment systems worked but also wanted to change how current payment mechanisms and general social interaction and commerce worked in the future. I share some of his concerns, but do not find his solution satisfactory. I also remain unconvinced that point to point protection of sensitive information including credit cards numbers solves anything. Infosec as practiced in the WebWorld leaves much to be desired. Point to point encryption + weak and misleading naming (domain names) + near meaningless authentication + untrustworthy practices = slightly worse to slightly better than nothing at all. I am extremely patient (5-50 year time horizon) and remain hopeful that time, money, and proper attention by experienced risk and operations managers will resolve many of the weaknesses with current infrastructure and business models. Kawika

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"Phillip Hallam-Baker" 11/05/98 09:07PM >>> Phil is right in much of what he says but in a couple of cases he is wrong.

Regarding the 'vortex of buzz technologies', VRML, network computers and push are certainly not hot properties at the moment, neither is interactive TV - but the Web was designed as the antithesis of Interactive TV. The root failure of Interactive TV was the assumption that the world wanted to spend its time passively consuming the dross pumped out through a 1000 channel 120" TV which would dominate the home. I would also like to add Java onto the pile. Java today is simply what C++ should have been. It does not revolutionize the programming industry, it simply provides what some people think is an object oriented programming environment and removes some of the worst legacy clutter of C. Cryptographic payment systems are here - in the form of credit card transactions over SSL. The main problem with SET and its competitors is that SSL works a little too well. That is not to say that there is no future for SET. SSL and credit cards are unlikely to make the leap from the consumer market to the business to business market. SET provides an ideal platform to integrate the use of the credit card infrastructure for business payments. The other area where I would disagree is over protocols. HTTP is quite radically different to FTP in that it is a computer client to computer server protocol. The metaphor of FTP is rumaging through a filing cabinet. The HTTP and Web mechanism employs a locator. Admittedly there was nothing to stop a text mode Web being created in 1982 but nobody did so. What is true is that the time taken for Internet technologies to move to market is very slow. Much of the HTTP technology that just reached the market was proposed in '92 and '93. Finaly I have difficulty regarding Digicash as being all that socially responsible. Chaum's problems had a lot to do with the business terms he insisted on. What he had was a technology which allowed an improvement to a payment system. He imagined he had a monopoly on the only feasible solution. He was very baddly mistaken. The monopoly rents he demanded were more than the market was willing to pay for a working and deployed system - let alone for a patent license. Phill For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request@ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help".