On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 05:34:53PM -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
Probably I'd start out with Schneier's Applied Cryptography, making a beeline for the digital cash section. I've heard that the pros now use the CRC handbook of crypto, but this is the one I read first, when it came out in 1994 or so. It's the closest thing cypherpunks have to a Boy Scout Handbook.
I would recommend the HAC as a reference and something else as an introduction (my favorite is "Decrypted Secrets" by F.L. Bauer, but there are lots of good books). Schneier is a bit of both, but not particularly good at either. Peter Wayner wrote a book about digital cash a couple of years ago.
For politics, I'd go read David Freidman, son of Milton, well-known law-and-economic professor and anarcho-capitalist. "The Machinery of Freedom" is a good start, because his thesis there is that we really don't need the nation-state for much. It's a pre-crypto book, 1970-something, and now that we think we know how to get there from here,
Friedman's "Hidden Order" is interesting. It includes many of the ideas from the Machinery of Freedom in a newer form, and I suppose it is a pretty good start for learning about economics. On the fiction side, there is Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon". E-cash, data havens and all that...